John Hoddinott

Economic mobility and poverty dynamics in developing countries

This study provides an introduction to this special issue of The Journal of Development Studies on economic mobility and poverty dynamics in developing countries. In addition to providing a conceptual framework, it outlines how the contributions fit into the extant literature. A series of regularities emerge across these studies. The poor consist of those who are always poor — poor at all dates — and those who move in and out of poverty, with the latter group tending to be strikingly large. Such movements in and out of poverty are apparent when looking at poverty in either absolute or relative terms. Changes in returns to endowments can be a potent source of increased incomes. Finally, seemingly transitory shocks can have long‐term consequences. The study concludes by drawing out the policy implications of these regularities.

Effect of a nutrition intervention during early childhood on economic productivity in Guatemalan adults

BACKGROUND Substantial, but indirect, evidence suggests that improving nutrition in early childhood in developing countries is a long-term economic investment. We investigated the direct effect of a nutrition intervention in early childhood on adult economic productivity. METHODS We obtained economic data from 1424 Guatemalan individuals (aged 25-42 years) between 2002 and 2004. They accounted for 60% of the 2392 children (aged 0-7 years) who had been enrolled in a nutrition intervention study during 1969-77. In this initial study, two villages were randomly assigned a nutritious supplement (atole) for all children and two villages a less nutritious one (fresco). We estimated annual income, hours worked, and average hourly wages from all economic activities. We used linear regression models, adjusting for potentially confounding factors, to assess the relation between economic variables and exposure to atole or fresco at specific ages between birth and 7 years. FINDINGS Exposure to atole before, but not after, age 3 years was associated with higher hourly wages, but only for men. For exposure to atole from 0 to 2 years, the increase was US

Gender differentials in farm productivity: Implications for household efficiency and agricultural policy

0.67 per hour (95% CI 0.16-1.17), which meant a 46% increase in average wages. There was a non-significant tendency for hours worked to be reduced and for annual incomes to be greater for those exposed to atole from 0 to 2 years. INTERPRETATION Improving nutrition in early childhood led to substantial increases in wage rates for men, which suggests that investments in early childhood nutrition can be long-term drivers of economic growth.

Shocks and their consequences across and within households in Rural Zimbabwe

Abstract Within many African households, agricultural production is simultaneously carried out on many plots controlled by different members of the household. Detailed plot-level agronomic data from Burkina Faso provides striking evidence of substantial inefficiencies in the allocation of factors of production across the plots controlled by different members of the household. Production function estimates imply that the value of household output could be increased by 10–15% by reallocating currently used factors of production across plots. This finding contradicts standard models of agricultural households. A richer model of behaviour, which recognizes that the individuals who comprise a household compete as well as co-operate, has important implications for the structure of agricultural production and for the design of agricultural policy.

The Impact of Improving Nutrition During Early Childhood on Education Among Guatemalan Adults

Abstract Increasing attention is now being paid to poverty dynamics in developing countries. This work links the extent to which households smooth consumption or smooth assets given income shocks, the empirical evidence on the churning of households in and out of poverty, and the possibility that temporary shocks can have permanent consequences. Using longitudinal data from rural Zimbabwe, this paper extends the discussion of these issues by disaggregating the impact of shocks by levels of asset holdings, by disaggregating the impact of shocks on individual level welfare and by assessing the extent to which such shocks have permanent consequences. By doing so, it assesses the validity of distinguishing between asset and consumption smoothing and provides insights into whether poverty dynamics assessed at the household level provide an adequate picture of dynamics at the individual level.

The Impact of PROGRESA on Food Consumption

Using a longitudinal survey from rural Guatemala, we examine the effect of an early childhood nutritional intervention on adult educational outcomes. An intent-to-treat model yields substantial effects of an experimental intervention that provided highly nutritious food supplements to children, a quarter century after it ended: increases of 1.2 grades completed for women and one quarter SD on standardised reading comprehension and non-verbal cognitive ability tests for both women and men. Two-stage least squares results that endogenise the actual supplement intakes corroborate these magnitudes. Improving the nutrient intakes of very young children can have substantial, long-term, educational consequences.

The Impact of Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net Programme and its Linkages

In this article we used data from the Mexican poverty alleviation program called PROGRESA (Programa de Educación, Salud y Alimentación) to examine whether eligibility for a cash transfer provided by the program conditional on children’s regular school attendance and regular visits to health centers is also associated with increased consumption of food. We used a longitudinal sample of approximately 24,000 households from 506 communities. A distinguishing characteristic of this sample was that some of the communities were randomly selected for participation in PROGRESA, while the rest were introduced into the program at later phases. Exploiting this feature in our analysis, we found that eligible households in the villages covered by PROGRESA increased caloric acquisition compared with eligible households not receiving these benefits. By November 1999, median beneficiary households in treatment localities obtained 6.4% more calories than did comparable households in control localities. Perhaps even more significant, we found that the impact was greatest on dietary quality as measured by the acquisition of calories from vegetable and animal products—a finding consistent with the view of respondents themselves that PROGRESA was enabling them to “eat better.”

Must Conditional Cash Transfer Programs be Conditioned to be Effective? The Impact of Conditioning Transfers on School Enrollment in Mexico

This paper assesses the impact of Ethiopias Productive Safety Nets Programme (PSNP), the largest social protection program in sub-Saharan Africa outside of South Africa. Using Propensity Score Matching techniques, we find that the programme has little impact on participants on average, due in part to transfer levels that fell far below program targets. Beneficiary households that received at least half of the intended transfers experienced a significant improvement in food security by some measures. However, participants with access to both the PSNP and packages of agricultural support are more likely to be food secure, to borrow for productive purposes, use improved agricultural technologies, and operate non-farm own business activities. For these households, there is no evidence of disincentive effects in terms of labour supply or private transfers. However, beneficiaries did not experience faster asset growth.

Adult consequences of growth failure in early childhood

A growing body of evidence suggests that conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs can have strong, positive effects on a range of welfare indicators for poor households in developing countries. However, there is little evidence about how important each component of these programs is towards achieving these outcomes. This paper tests the importance of conditionality on one specific outcome related to human capital formation, school enrollment, using data collected during the evaluation of Mexicos PROGRESA program. We exploit the fact that some beneficiaries who received transfers did not receive the forms needed to monitor the attendance of their children at school. We use a variety of techniques, including nearest neighbor matching and household fixed effects regressions, to show that the absence of these forms reduced the likelihood that children attended school with this effect most pronounced when children are transitioning to lower secondary school. We provide substantial evidence that these findings are not driven by unobservable characteristics of households or localities.

Is There Persistence in the Impact of Emergency Food Aid? Evidence on Consumption, Food Security, and Assets in Rural Ethiopia

Background: Growth failure is associated with adverse consequences, but studies need to control adequately for confounding. Objective: We related height-for-age z scores (HAZs) and stunting at age 24 mo to adult human capital, marriage, fertility, health, and economic outcomes. Design: In 2002–2004, we collected data from 1338 Guatemalan adults (aged 25–42 y) who were studied as children in 1969–1977. We used instrumental variable regression to correct for estimation bias and adjusted for potentially confounding factors. Results: A 1-SD increase in HAZ was associated with more schooling (0.78 grades) and higher test scores for reading and nonverbal cognitive skills (0.28 and 0.25 SDs, respectively), characteristics of marriage partners (1.39 y older, 1.02 grade more schooling, and 1.01 cm taller) and, for women, a higher age at first birth (0.77 y) and fewer number of pregnancies and children (0.63 and 0.43, respectively). A 1-SD increase in HAZ was associated with increased household per capita expenditure (21%) and a lower probability of living in poverty (10 percentage points). Conversely, being stunted at 2 y was associated with less schooling, a lower test performance, a lower household per capita expenditure, and an increased probability of living in poverty. For women, stunting was associated with a lower age at first birth and higher number of pregnancies and children. There was little relation between either HAZ or stunting and adult health. Conclusion: Growth failure in early life has profound adverse consequences over the life course on human, social, and economic capital.