OBJECTIVES Household food insecurity is a major determinant of undernutrition, yet there is little information on its prevalence in the South African population. This paper assesses household food insecurity in South Africa using a quantitative and objective measure, known as food poverty, and provides prevalence estimates by geographic area and socio-economic condition. DESIGN Secondary data...

EPTD Discussion Papers contain preliminary material and research results, and are circulated prior to a full peer review in order to stimulate discussion and critical comment. It is expected that most Discussion Papers will eventually be published in some other form, and t hat their content may also be revised. ABSTRACT This study analyzes how market imperfections affect land productivity in a ...

In this paper, we employ stochastic dominance analysis on Australian unit records to investigate trends in inequality and relative welfare levels in Australia over the period 1983 to 2004. We find that that when the stochastic dominance tests are applied to income and expenditure distributions for the entire population, net transfers to households do not appear to make any significant differenc...

The paper examines the linkages between gender of household heads, education and household poverty in Nigeria between 1980 and 1996. Data analyzed were obtained from four national consumer expenditure surveys conducted in Nigeria in 1980, 1985, 1992 and 1996 by the Federal Office of Statistics. Adjustments were made for price differentials over time and across regions of the country. However, o...

The HIV/AIDS pandemic threatens economic, social, and environmental sustainability throughout sub-Saharan Africa. This paper reports on a qualitative study exploring interrelationships between HIV/AIDS, labor availability, agricultural productivity, household resources, food consumption, and health status in rural southeastern Uganda. Respondents reported an increase in widow-and-orphan-headed ...

Background South Africa has been noted to have the fastest growing rate of people living with HIV/AIDS. This has led to an alarming increase in the number of children orphaned by AIDS and the attendant care of the orphaned children by their siblings leading to the formation of child headed households (CHHs). The study was conducted in two phases. Phase 1 identified CHHs in a resource poor commu...

Using panel data on urban households, we investigate which groups were most vulnerable to the large food price shocks that occurred between 2004 and 2008 in Ethiopia. Econometric results for consumption growth models and for a model of the perceived severity of food price shocks indicate that the type of household most vulnerable to the food price inflation has few household members, a high dep...

BACKGROUND It is imperative to track dietary quality and progress in nutritional outcomes in a population to develop timely interventions. Dietary diversity is a commonly used proxy to assess dietary quality in low-income countries. This study identified predictors of household dietary diversity in Ethiopia and pattern of consumption of animal source food (ASF) among households. METHODS Secon...

The crop sector in Burkina Faso has been facing recurrent droughts since 1970. This study analyzes the impacts of and adaptation options such as use irrigation capacity development methods, integrated soil management drought-tolerant varieties on sector. Indeed, we focus consequences agricultural economic growth employment gender dimension household poverty. Using a gendered dynamic computable ...

This paper examines implications drawn from labor supply literature for the design of a transfer program for female-headed families when the youngest child turns six years old. It is found that if the average level of support to households remains cons tant, a "safety-net" view of the system would lead to raising the tax rate dramatically while only moderately increasing the guarantee. In contr...