Luc Christiaensen

Consumption Risk, Technology Adoption and Poverty Traps: Evidence From Ethiopia

Much has been written on the determinants of input and technology adoption in agriculture, with issues such as input availability, knowledge and education, risk preferences, profitability, and credit constraints receiving much attention. This paper focuses on a factor that has been less well documented: the differential ability of households to take on risky production technologies for fear of the welfare consequences if shocks result in poor harvests. Building on an explicit model, this is explored in panel data for Ethiopia. Historical rainfall distributions are used to identify the counterfactual consumption risk. Controlling for unobserved household and time-varying village characteristics, it emerges that not just exante credit constraints, but also the possibly low consumption outcomes when harvests fail, discourage the application of fertiliser. The lack of insurance causes inefficiency in production choices.

Child Malnutrition in Ethiopia: Can Maternal Knowledge Augment the Role of Income?*

Over the past decades, child malnutrition in Ethiopia has persisted at alarmingly high rates. By applying the conditional nutrition demand approach to household data from three consecutive welfare monitoring surveys over the period 1996-1998, this study identifies household resources, parental education, food prices, and maternal nutritional knowledge as key determinants of growth faltering in Ethiopia. Income growth is important for alleviating child stunting, though on its own it will not suffice to reach the international goal of halving each countrys level of child malnutrition by 2020. Universalizing access to primary schooling for girls has slightly more promise. However, to reduce child growth faltering in Ethiopia in a significant - and timely - manner, our empirical results indicate that targeted child growth monitoring and maternal nutrition education programs will be needed in conjunction with efforts to promote private income growth and formal schooling.

Child Growth, Shocks, and Food Aid in Rural Ethiopia

Over the past decades child stunting in Ethiopia has persisted at alarming rates. While the country experienced several droughts during this period, it also received enormous amounts of food aid, leading some to question the effectiveness of food aid in reducing child malnutrition. Using nationally representative household surveys from 1995-96 and controlling for program placement, we find that children between 6 and 24 months experienced about 0.9 cm less growth over a six-month period in communities where half the crop area was damaged compared to those without crop damage. Food aid was also found to have a substantial effect on growth of children in this age group. Moreover, on average the total amount of food aid appeared to be sufficient to protect children against plot damage, an encouraging sign that food aid can act as an effective insurance mechanism, though its cost effectiveness needs further investigation.

Agriculture in Africa -- Telling Myths from Facts: A Synthesis

Stylized facts drive research agendas and policy debates. Yet robust stylized facts are hard to come by, and when available, often outdated. The 12 papers in this Special Issue revisit conventional wisdom on African agriculture and its farmers’ livelihoods using nationally representative surveys from the Living Standards Measurement Study-Integrated Surveys on Agriculture Initiative in six African countries. At times they simply confirm our common understanding of the topic. But they also throw up a number of surprises, redirecting policy debates while fine-tuning others. Overall, the project calls for more attention to checking and updating our common wisdom. This requires nationally representative data, and sufficient incentives among researchers and policymakers alike. Without well-grounded stylized facts, they can easily be profoundly misguided.

Where to create jobs : cities or towns?

Should public investment be targeted to big cities or to small towns, if the objective is to minimize national poverty? To answer this policy question the authors extend the basic Todaro-type model of rural-urban migration to the case of migration from rural areas to two potential destinations, secondary town and big city. The authors first derive labor income, migration cost and poverty line conditions under which a poverty gradient from rural to town to city will exist as an equilibrium phenomenon. The authors then develop sufficient statistics for the policy decisions based on these income parameters. The empirical remit of the model is illustrated with long running panel data from Kagera, Tanzania. Further, we show that the structure of the sufficient statistics is maintained in the case where the model is generalized to introduce heterogeneous workers and jobs.