International Food Policy Research Institute

About: International Food Policy Research Institute is a nonprofit organization based out in Washington D.C., District of Columbia, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Agriculture & Food security. The organization has 1217 authors who have published 4952 publications receiving 218436 citations.

The Future in Mind: Aspirations and Forward-Looking Behaviour in Rural Ethiopia

Abstract: Poor people often do not make investments, even when returns are high. One possible explanation is that they have low aspirations and form mental models of their future opportunities which ignore some options for investment. This paper reports on a field experiment to test this hypothesis in rural Ethiopia. Individuals were randomly invited to watch documentaries about people from similar communities who had succeeded in agriculture or business, without help from government or NGOs. A placebo group watched an Ethiopian entertainment programme and a control group were simply surveyed. In addition, the number of people invited was varied by village to assess the importance of peer effects in formation of aspirations. Six months after screening, aspirations had improved among treated individuals and did not change in the placebo or control groups. Treatment effects were larger for those with higher pre-treatment aspirations. We also find treatment effects on savings, use of credit, children’s school enrolment and spending on children’s schooling, suggesting that changes in aspirations can translate into changes in a range of forward-looking behaviours. There are also treatment effects on measures from psychology and sociology, including locus of control, which theory predicts should behave in similar ways to aspirations. Most effects are robust to corrections for multiple testing. Peer effects result in further impact on educational spending and induce more work and less leisure. The result that a one-hour documentary shown six months earlier induces actual behavioural change suggests a challenging, promising avenue for further research and poverty-related interventions.

International Productivity Patterns: Accounting for Input Quality, Infrastructure, and Research

Abstract: In this paper, we present measures of land and labor productivity for a group of ninety-eight developed and developing countries using an entirely new data set with annual observations spanning the past three decades. The substantial cross-country and intertemporal variation in productivity in our sample is linked to both natural and economic factors. We extend previous work by dealing with multiple sources of systematic measurement error in conventional agricultural inputs. The mix of conventional inputs, indicators of quality of agricultural inputs, and the amount of publicly provided infrastructure are all significant in explaining observed cross-sectional differences in productivity patterns.

Household Food Insecurity Is Associated with Higher Child Undernutrition in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Vietnam, but the Effect Is Not Mediated by Child Dietary Diversity

Abstract: Household food insecurity (HFI) is a recognized underlying determinant of child undernutrition, but evidence of associations between HFI and child undernutrition is mixed. The purpose of this study was to investigate if HFI is associated with undernutrition in children aged 6–59.9 mo in Bangladesh (n = 2356), Ethiopia (n = 3422), and Vietnam (n = 3075) and if child dietary diversity (DD) mediated this effect. We used baseline survey data from the Alive & Thrive project. Logisticregression,adjustingforpotentialconfoundingfactors,wasusedtodeterminethemagnitudeandsignificance of the association of HFI with stunting, underweight, and wasting. The mediating effect of child DD was tested by using a Sobel-Goodman mediation test. The prevalences of HFI were 66%, 40%, and 32% in Ethiopia, Vietnam, and Bangladesh, respectively. The prevalences of stunting, underweight, and wasting were higher in Bangladesh (47.1%, 43.7%, and 19.1%, respectively) and Ethiopia (50.7%, 27.5%, and 5.9%, respectively) than in Vietnam (20.7%, 15.8%, and 5%, respectively). In the adjusted models, the odds of being stunted or underweight were significantly higher for children in severely food-insecure households in Bangladesh (stunting OR: 1.36; 95% CI: 1.05, 1.76; underweight OR: 1.28; 95% CI: 0.99, 1.65) and Ethiopia (stunting OR: 1.48; 95% CI: 1.09, 2.00; underweight OR: 1.68; 95% CI: 1.22, 2.30) and in moderately food-insecurehouseholds in Vietnam (stunting OR: 1.39; 95% CI: 1.16, 1.65; underweight OR: 1.69; 95% CI: 1.28, 2.23). HFI was significantly associated with wasting in Bangladesh where close to 1 in 5 children demonstrated wasting. Child DD did not mediate the relation between HFI and undernutrition in any of the countries. Further research is recommended to investigate potential mediators in

The impact of the green revolution and prospects for the future

Abstract: This article addresses some of the issues considered to be of great importance for continued success of the Green Revolution. The most recent data on its impact on food production are discussed first. Then follows a discussion of the impact on production fluctuation. Current evidence of the impact on poverty and nutrition is summarized in the third section. Recent research has shown that the multiplier or linkage effects of technological change may be very important for assuring a desirable path of self-sustaining growth. This issue is dealt with in the fourth section, followed by a discussion of the role of women in technological change, an important growth as well as equity issue which has received little attention until recently. Then follows a brief assessment of the actual and potential environmental effects. A number of other issues with important implications for the future contribution of technological change, such as future control over germplasm, organization of and control over the international agricultural research institutes, the needs for institutional and policy changes in many developing countries, and the need for new technology to facilitate a solution to the acute food problem in Sub-Saharan Africa, are discussed in the last section