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Showing papers by "International Food Policy Research Institute published in 1983"


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper is concerned with the effect of increases in income on the caloric intake of a population and the determinants of household caloric intake, and what effect does family food intake have on a preschooler’s caloric intake.
Abstract: The assumption in many previous nutrition interventions has been that increases in food expenditures improve family caloric intake and ultimately increase child energy consumption and improve a child’s nutritional status. An intervention that has a positive, significant effect on any one of these linkages is presumed ultimately to improve child health and nutritional status. For example, food stamp programmes assume that by increasing a family’s food purchasing power, the family diet will improve and a part of this nutritional benefit will be passed on to the child. Similarly, a supplementary feeding scheme is based on the assumption that provision of food-either to a specific individual or to a family-will ultimately lead to an improvement in the recipient’s nutritional status. Existing data sets from four countries were used for the analyses in this paper. The Thai data were collected as part of a nation-wide survey (1). The Mexican data refer only to Mexico City and were collected in May 1978 as part of an evaluation of the CONASUPO milk subsidy programme (2). Similarly, the Sudan data were collected only for an urban population (Khartoum) as part of an evaluation of the government’s wheat subsidy programme (3). The Malaysia data were generated from an evaluation of the World Bank irrigation project in the Muda Region (4). Specifically, this paper is concerned with three questions: • What is the effect of increases in income on the caloric intake of a population? • What are the determinants of household caloric intake? • What effect does family food intake have on a preschooler’s caloric intake? Data from Thailand, Malaysia, and the Sudan were used to answer the first question. Data from Mexico City were used to provide answers to the second and third questions.

21 citations



Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The case of the cereal import facility at the International Monetary Fund has been investigated in this paper, where the authors argue that social science research must be careful, timely and "translatable" if it is to be effectively used by policymakers.

16 citations



Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Understanding of the mechanisms by which nutritional status is affected and how this mechanism and its key components link immediate programme effects to nutritional impact is required is necessary to understand why some programmes and policies are more or less effective than others.
Abstract: Food policies are rarely assessed for their effect on human nutrition. Yet, such assessment, if properly done, would facilitate the incorporation of nutrition goals into the choice and design of these policies with the likely result of improving nutritional impact. The degree to which expected nutritional effects should influence the choice and design of policies with multiple objectives would ideally be determined on the basis of: the importance of the nutritional problem relative to other problems towards which a given policy is aimed and the cost of achieving a certain nutritional improvement through the particular policy relative to the cost of achieving such improvement by means of the least-cost alternative policy or programmes. Clearly, certain nutrition problems are most efficiently dealt with through direct nutrition intervention and/or health programmes, while others should be approached through broader food policies. However, in order to select the most appropriate approach it is important to understand not only how the various programmes and policies affect nutritional status, but also how the impact is transmitted. Many, although by no means all, past evaluations of nutrition programmes have attempted to assess the impact on selected indicators of nutritional status while partially or totally ignoring the intermediate steps or relationships that brought about the impact as well as other factors that might have exercised impact simultaneously with the programme being evaluated. If the sole purpose of a given study is to evaluate, ex post facto, the impact of a particular programme on the nutritional status of a particular group of people during a particular time period and within certain environmental influences, such an approach may suffice. A caricature of an evaluation of this nature is shown in figure 1. No attempts are made to analyse the mechanism by which the impact is transmitted, i.e., it is unknown what happened inside the “black box.” The study merely compares a situation where the programme is present to a situation where it is absent, either over time for the same population group or at a given point in time across population groups. But if analyses of past and current programmes are to be truly useful for the choice and design of new programmes and policies and modifications or termination of current ones, it is necessary to know not only by how much but also how nutritional ‘statue is influenced by the various programmes. We must understand why some programmes and policies are more or less effective than others. This requires understanding of the mechanisms by which nutritional status is affected and how this mechanism and its key components link immediate programme effects to nutritional impact. The process components must be identified and their interaction understood. The job of evaluating a given programme then becomes one of tracing programme impact through the relevant processes while estimating the impact on each of the relevant components.

9 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors describe current market conditions and the nature of the food security challenge they present, and consider the kinds of food security measures which have been or could be taken with respect to improving LDC operations in commercial grain markets, using reserves to achieve supply and price stabilization objectives and making food aid a more effective instrument for food security.

7 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors consider the impact of household provisioning mechanisms on intra-household food distribution and propose a framework to understand the dynamics in the functioning of households, which is based on anthropological investigation into the various dimensions of households.
Abstract: In order to develop an understanding of policy impact on intrahousehold food distribution, it is imperative first to understand the dynamics in the functioning of households. Unfortunately, not much attention has been given to this by two major disciplines that have to date been involved in nutrition policies. Neither nutritional science nor economics has addressed the question seriously. At the very basis is the need for an explicit recognition of the diversity in structure, composition, and function of households under various socio-cultural and economic environments. Interesting insights have been provided by anthropological investigation into the various dimensions of household units. The paper by Messer in this issue shows some of the variations in household-provisioning mechanisms adopted by household units under diverse sociocultural conditions. A recent review by Dwyer (1) shows, in addition, the need for a gender-differentiated approach to household behaviour. The framework postulated here has as its core the nature of the provisioning mechanisms adopted by household units It is suggested that these provisioning mechanisms are conditioned or even derived (the direction of causality here is not essential for the framework) from the social and cultural milieu, including the theologicallegal environment. In addition, change in economic factors can influence these provisioning mechanisms directly as well as indirectly by inducing changes in the socio-cultural scene. There are two possible ways in which intra-household food distribution is influenced by the household provisioning mechanism. First, by determining intrahousehold distribution of capital (both physical and human), division of labour, and resource/income generation it affects intra-household control of resource allocation (including time). Second, it determines preference functions for intra-household investment in nutrition and health. This in turn provides the basis for an intergenerational transfer and exchange of resources and the start of the process all over again.

6 citations




Journal Article
TL;DR: In particular, the "escalada", a caracteristica comun de los sistemas protectores, fijan aranceles pro gresivamente mas elevados a los productos semielaborados and acabados, perjudican directamente a los exportadores, disminuyendo la tasa de crecimiento de ingresos and reduciendo el empleo as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: El comercio de los productos agricolas representa una gran parte del comercio global en la mayoria de los paises menos desarrollados (pmd). Si se incrementaran las exportaciones agricolas el aumento de la produc cion en los pmd podria elevar sus ganancias en divisas, ingresos y em pleo. Por otra parte, en los ultimos anos los pmd han aumentado consi derablemente sus importaciones de alimentos, sobre todo de cereales. Las barreras al comercio en los paises desarrollados, incluyendo las econo mias planeadas a nivel central, son de gran importancia para muchos pmd porque afectan directamente sus perspectivas de exportaciones agrico las y el costo de sus importaciones de alimentos. Las barreras al comercio de productos agricolas son a menudo resul tado de politicas nacionales de sustentacion agricola. Estas comprenden barreras arancelarias y no arancelarias (bna) como gravamenes varia bles e importaciones, restricciones cuantitativas de importaciones, practi cas discriminatorias de adquisiciones publicas y subsidios a produccion y exportaciones. Todas tienden a reducir los precios mundiales y a res tringir el volumen de exportacion para los exportadores tanto de los PMD como de los paises desarrollados. Por la misma razon los precios mas bajos reducen el costo de las importaciones de alimentos efectuadas por los pmd. La proteccion aumenta aun mas mediante la "escalada", una caracteristica comun de los sistemas protectores, que fijan aranceles pro gresivamente mas elevados a los productos semielaborados y acabados. Estos mecanismos protectores perjudican directamente a los pmd res tringiendo sus oportunidades de ganar divisas, disminuyendo la tasa de crecimiento de sus ingresos y reduciendo el empleo. Indirectamente, la amenaza de proteccion inhibe las inversiones en industrias de exportacion y desestimula la adopcion de politicas de orientacion comercial que pro bablemente mejorarian los resultados globales del desarrollo en los pmd. Por el contrario, en lo que respecta a las importaciones, la proteccion