We investigate the consequences of forced displacement using a panel of households that were surveyed during Yemen’s conflict both before and after they became displaced. We demonstrate that forced displacement resulted in an immediate but temporary decline in food access. Pre- and post-displacement food access outcomes were indistinguishable within four months of displacement and, for later months, we can rule out economically large declines in food access. The quick rebound is partially explained by an increase in assistance to displaced households that had worse food access prior to displacement; households that were slightly better off prior to displacement did not receive an increase in assistance. These are the first estimates that directly address how non-security dimensions of wellbeing change immediately following forced displacement and demonstrate that, in some contexts, forcibly displaced households are more resilient than is typically assumed.

Using novel data from rural Bangladesh reporting individual-level food consumption and anthropometric measures, we find substantial inequities in the intrahousehold distribution of calories and nutrients, with male household heads reported to consume disproportionately large shares. There are also smaller body mass index shortfalls for heads relative to their spouses. Further, lower economic well-being and women's disempowerment are associated with more inequitable calorie distributions. These findings have implications for the measurement of undernourishment, where aggregate household-level data misclassify the undernourishment status of nearly a quarter of the rural Bangladeshi population due to intrahousehold inequities.

BACKGROUND:While income and prices are key drivers of dietary choices, how their influence varies by food category, nation, and demographics is not well established. Based on intake data for 164 countries and 11 food categories, we examined how income and food prices relate to food intake globally, including by world region, age, and sex.METHODS:We used 2010 intake data from the Global Dietary Database, the first database of consumption estimates for major food categories by country, age, and sex. We combined these data with national per capita GDP and food price data. We estimated intake responsiveness to income and prices for each food category, accounting for differences by national income, world region, age, and sex.RESULTS:We identified several differences in intake responsiveness. For example, rising income was estimated to increase milk intake most strongly in Sub-Saharan Africa and fruit intake most strongly among older women globally. Comparing our intake results to previous findings based on expenditure data, we found more goods that exhibited declining intake in response to rising incomes, fewer significant relationships for a number of food categories, particularly for higher income regions, and whereas in prior studies, elasticities mostly decrease with national income, we identified food categories where this was not the case.CONCLUSION:The results of this study show heterogeneous associations among income, prices, and food intakes. Policymakers should consider the price and income elasticities of certain foods, as well as the role of demographics within and across countries, as they address global nutrition and health challenges.

Worldwide changes in eating habits are contributing to a rise in obesity and chronic noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) such as diabetes and heart disease, across all countries, including middle- and low-income countries. Now that many countries share common challenges related to food choice and public health, international organizations such as the World Health Organization have recommended global campaigns to address the rise of NCDs by implementing policies to improve diets. Although these organizations have proposed pricing and income policies, the effectiveness of such policies—based on income level and regional preferences, as well as on age and gender—could differ across countries. To address this issue, this study investigates how income and prices influence dietary habits globally. No prior studies have globally evaluated the influence of price and income on major dietary risk factors for NCDs by age or gender. In this report, nationally representative dietary intake data for 164 countries were used to derive income and own-price elasticities of food consumption across the spectrum of rich and poor countries. Our results show considerable differences among individuals across food groups, regions/countries, and age and gender subgroups. Similar to past studies of cross-country food demand, results also show that low-income countries are more affected by changes in income and food prices than are higher income countries. (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

In this chapter, we present evidence on household coping strategies from a nationally representative household survey collected in Afghanistan before and during the 2007/2008 food price crisis. We looked at changes in various dimensions of food security, including calorie, dietary diversity, and nutrient intake. And we look at the purchase of food on credit, the sale of productive assets, school enrollment, and migration. We found strong evidence that the wheat flour price increases affected the well-being of Afghan households, who had to reduce both their food and nonfood expenditures. The reductions in the value of food consumed were reflected in the reductions in the quantity and quality of food consumed, including reduced nutrient intake. Households reduced their nonfood expenditures across several categories, including healthcare, clothing, grooming, communication, transportation, cigarettes and tobacco, and culture. And households purchased food on credit more frequently. We failed to find changes in educational expenditure or school enrollment, the sale of productive assets, or migration. We used the unconditional quantile regression (UQR) estimator to identify how prices affected households located at specific points on the unconditional distributions (such as the 20th or 80th quantiles) of the food security indicators. The most vulnerable households, those at the bottom of the calorie distribution, cannot afford to make substantial cuts to their caloric intake since they are close to or below the minimum daily energy requirements; accordingly, we found no statistically significant decline in their caloric intake. Households at the bottom of the dietary diversity distribution—often very poor households—experience very large declines in dietary diversity as a result of the wheat flour price increases (although even households at the top of the distribution also experience substantial declines).

Using panel data from the Ethiopia Socioeconomic Survey (ESS), representative of all people living in rural and small-town areas, this paper describes changing patterns of food security between 2012 and 2014. We examine four measures of food security – two consumption based (calories and dietary diversity) and two experience based (whether food insecurity was experienced in any month, and whether any actions were taken in response).Over all four measures in both years, the share of the food insecure population was never less than 25 percent. Disentangling chronic from transitory food insecurity is important for policy design and for estimating the total food insecurity count over time. For example, the average rate of inadequate dietary diversity was approximately 30 percent in both 2012 and 2014, but the panel data reveal that 46 percent of the rural and small-town population had inadequately diverse diets at some point over the period. While the cross-sectional estimates suggest similar patterns in levels and trends of the measures, the panel data reveal that there is very little comovement of the measures. For example, observing that someone has improved in terms of dietary diversity does not reveal information as to whether she or he has similarly improved in terms of the experiential-based measures.

Although undernourishment is characteristic of the individual, measurement has centered on household-level statistics that make strong assumptions regarding the equitable distribution of calories across household members. Utilizing a novel data source from Bangladesh that reports individual-level calorie intake, we investigate whether households distribute food equitably. We find substantial inequities in the intra-household distribution of calories, with household heads consuming inequitably large shares of total household calories. Furthermore, we find more inequitable calorie distributions among undernourished, poor households. Importantly, these results do not appear to be driven by assumptions about the energy requirements of household members. Due to the inequities, aggregate household-level data misclassify the nutritional status of a large share of the population. These findings have implications for food and nutrition program targeting, which often is based on household-level data.

This report finds that many women and children in rural Bangladesh are undernourished in households in which their male head of household is adequately nourished, based on an analysis of the Bangladesh Integrated Household Survey. The survey covered household food consumption and expenditure for a given 7 days and individual-level consumption for a given 24 hours (2011 to 2012). Quantitative assessments of food secu­ rity for each type of data found that, if only household-level data were used, a signifi­ cant number of women and children were misclassified as receiving adequate nutrition because calories in a household previously were assumed to be equitably distributed. These findings suggest that intrahousehold data can contribute to the identification of undernourished populations, particularly women and children. Such identification, with the objective of improving nutritional status, is of particular interest to the U.S. Government’s interagency Feed the Future initiative.

Household access to food over time in Tanzania is measured by comparing the cost of representative food baskets to household income. Consumption patterns, estimated using household data from the 2010/11 National Panel Survey conducted by Tanzania’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), show considerable diversity across the country. Maize (corn) dominates the diets in the surplus-maize-producing regions. Households in the maize-deficit regions in the north favor other sources of starch such as cassava and banana. The food baskets include 15 food groups that make up approximately 67 to 88 percent of average calorie intake. From 2008/09 to 2010/11, food basket costs rose rapidly in nominal terms but were stable in real terms. Combining food basket cost data and income data suggests that households in the bottom two income quintiles have significant difficulties with access to food. (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Based on data from Afghanistan collected prior to and during the 2007-2008 food price crisis, this paper illustrates that caloric intake is an ineffectual indicator for monitoring the onset of food insecurity. Unconditional Quantile Regression estimates indicate that the most vulnerable of households, which cannot afford to make substantial cuts to calories, exhibit no decline in caloric intake in response to increasing wheat prices. In contrast, households with high-calorie diets experience large declines. The estimates also reveal declines in dietary diversity across the entire distribution of households. The most vulnerable households may be sacrificing diet quality to maintain calories, with the potential for serious and long-term health consequences.

We study procurement bribery utilizing survey data from 11,000 enterprises in 125 countries. About one-third of managers report that firms like theirs bribe to secure a public contract, paying about 8 % of the contract value. Econometric estimations suggest that national governance factors, such as democratic accountability, press freedom, and rule of law, are associated with lower bribery. Larger and foreign-owned firms are less likely to bribe than smaller domestic ones. But among bribers, foreign and domestic firms pay similar amounts. Multinational firms appear sensitive to reputational risks in their home countries, but partially adapt to their host country environments.

Using nationally-representative household survey data and confidential geo-coded data on violence, we examine the linkages between conflict, food insecurity, and food price shocks in Afghanistan. Spatial mappings of the raw data reveal large variations in levels of food insecurity and conflict across the country; surprisingly, food insecurity is not higher in conflict areas. In a multivariate regression framework, we exploit the 2008 spike in wheat flour prices to estimate differential effects on household food security – measured by calorie intake and the real value of food consumed – based on the level of conflict in the province where the household is located. We find robust evidence that households in provinces with higher levels of conflict experience larger declines in food security than households in provinces with lower levels of conflict. Therefore while conflict may not be the driving factor in overall levels of food insecurity in Afghanistan, it may limit the coping mechanisms available to households in the face of rising food prices. Gaining a better understanding of such linkages and knowing the spatial distribution of food insecurity can serve to inform policymakers interested in targeting scarce resources to vulnerable populations, for example, through the placement of strategic grain reserves or targeted food assistance programs.

This paper examines the effects of a watershed anti-corruption initiative – the 1997 OECD Anti-Bribery Convention – on international trade flows. I exploit variation in the timing of implementation by exporters and in the level of corruption of importers to quantify the Convention’s effects on bilateral exports. Using a large panel of country pairs to control for confounding global and national trends and shocks, I find that, on average, the Convention caused a reduction in exports from signatory countries to high corruption importers relative to low corruption importers. This suggests that by creating large penalties for foreign bribery, the Convention indirectly increased transaction costs between signatory countries and high corruption importers. I also find evidence that the Convention’s effects differed across product categories. *** A revised version of this article was accepted for publication in the Journal of Development Economics in December 2010, available online***

This article investigates the impact of rising wheat prices on household food security in Afghanistan. Exploiting a unique nationally-representative household survey, we find evidence of large declines in the real value of per capita food consumption. Smaller price elasticities with respect to calories than with respect to food consumption suggest that households trade off quality for quantity as they move away from nutrient-rich foods such as meat and vegetables toward staple foods. Our work improves upon country-level simulation studies by providing estimates of actual household food security during a price shock in one of the world's poorest, most food-insecure countries.

Food Security and Wheat Prices in Afghanistan: A Distribution-Sensitive Analysis of Household-Level Impacts We investigate the impact of increases in wheat flour prices on household food security using unique nationally-representative data collected in Afghanistan from 2007 to 2008. We use a new estimator, the Unconditional Quantile Regression (UQR) estimator, based on influence functions to examine the marginal effects of price increases at different locations on the distributions of several food security measures. UQR estimates reveal that the negative marginal effect of a price increase on food consumption is two and a half times larger for households that can afford to cut the value of food consumption (75 quantile) than for households at the bottom (25 quantile) of the food-consumption distribution. Similarly, households with diets high in calories reduce intake substantially, but those at the bottom of the calorie distribution (25 quantile) make very small changes in intake as a result of the price increases. In contrast, households at the bottom of the dietary diversity distribution make the largest adjustments in the quality of their diets, since such households often live at subsistence levels and cannot make large cuts in caloric intake without suffering serious health consequences. These results provide empirical evidence that when faced with staplefood price increases, food-insecure households sacrifice quality (diversity) in order to protect calories. The large differences in behavioral responses of households that lie at the top and bottom of these distributions suggest that policy analyses relying solely on OLS estimates may be misleading. JEL Classification: D12, I3

This paper investigates the impact of increases in wheat flour prices on household food security using unique nationally-representative data collected in Afghanistan from 2007 to 2008. It uses a new estimator, the Unconditional Quantile Regression estimator, based on influence functions, to examine the marginal effects of price increases at different locations on the distributions of several food security measures. The estimates reveal that the negative marginal effect of a price increase on food consumption is two and a half times larger for households that can afford to cut the value of food consumption (75th quantile) than for households at the bottom (25th quantile) of the food-consumption distribution. Similarly, households with diets high in calories reduce intake substantially, but those at the bottom of the calorie distribution (25th quantile) make very small changes in intake as a result of the price increases. In contrast, households at the bottom of the dietary diversity distribution make the largest adjustments in the quality of their diets, since such households often live at subsistence levels and cannot make large cuts in caloric intake without suffering serious health consequences. These results provide empirical evidence that when faced with staple-food price increases, food-insecure households sacrifice quality (diversity) in order to protect calories. The large differences in behavioral responses of households that lie at the top and bottom of these distributions suggest that policy analyses relying solely on ordinary least squares estimates may be misleading.

We assess whether and how violence and political instability affect trade between developed and developing countries considering the special case of EU imports of Kenyan roses after the 2007/08 post-election violence and political instability in Kenya. Using the Rotterdam model to estimate EU demand for roses from Kenya and other global competitors, we find evidence of a structural change in the import growth rate for Kenya, approximately equivalent to an 18.6% tariff. These results highlight the importance of non-tariff barriers to trade and contribute to the growing literature on the role of insecurity and instability in hindering international trade.