Program Interventions for Food Security, Poverty Alleviation and Rural Development

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Program Interventions for Food Security, Poverty
Alleviation and Rural Development

• Suresh Babu
• October 26, 2011

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Concept of Rural Development and Poverty
Alleviation

• Growth for poverty reduction
• Employment orientation
• Landless laborers
• Poor and vulnerable

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Green Revolution and Poverty

• Food production increase 250 m. tons
• Real price of food goes down?
• Extra resources for education/health

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Rural Growth Linkages

• Input supplies
• Marketing agents
• Repairs maintenance
• Artisans services
• Post-harvest agroprocessing

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Food to Health

• Macronutrients to Micronutrients
• Iron Anemia
• Vitamin A deficiency
• Child malnutrition remains high

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Technology Challenges

• Technology labor saving?
• Getting out of agriculture
• Rural nonfarm employment

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Increasing productivity
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Institutional Challenges

• Institutions to help the poor?
• Who are the poor?
• Where are they?
• Why are they?
• How to help?

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Rural Institutions

• The Gram Panchayats
• Linkages to service delivery
• Linkages to government programs
• Linkages to NGOs

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Policy Challenges

• What policies are in place?
• What programs are in place?
• How they affect people?
• How to influence policy?
• How to monitor the impact?

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Program Interventions

• Cash transfers
• Food related programs
• Price and tax subsidies
• Fee waivers in health
• Public works
• Microcredit and informal insurance

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Cross-cutting Issues

• Overview
• Institutions
• Targeting
• Evaluation
• Political Economy
• Gender
• Community Based Targeting

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Supplementary Feeding Programs

• Economic Rationale for Supplementary
• Feeding Programs
• Effectiveness of Supplementary Feeding
• Programs
• Appropriate Circumstances for the Use of
• Supplementary Feeding programs
• Program Design Issues
• Criteria for Program Evaluation

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Characteristics of Selected School Feeding
Programs
Ration Days per year Cost per 1,000 calories/day over 365 days (US ) Number of beneficiaries Estimated annual cost (US millions)
Tamil Nadu Mid-day meal 418 200 67.02 n.a. n.a.
Guatemala 456 165 19.25 1,099,000 4.3
Gambia 858 196 81.46 376,202 14.1
Nepal 3718 mix of Maternal and child Health and Social Fund 622 293 56.50 377,650 10.7
Source World Bank data
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Food for Work Programs

• Economic Rationale for Food for
• Work
• Program Design
• Criteria for Program Evaluation

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Food Stamp Programs

• Economic Rationale for Food Stamp Programs
• Appropriate Circumstances for the Use of Food
• Stamps
• Design Issues
• Suitability for Adapting to a Crisis
• Implementation of Food Stamp Programs
• Criteria for Evaluating Programs

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Emergency Feeding

• Rationale for World Bank Involvement with
• Emergency Feeding Programs
• Purpose of Emergency Feeding
• Timing the Transfer to Support Both Objectives
• Program Types
• Appropriate Conditions for Emergency Feeding

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An International Comparison of Leakage from Food
Subsidy Programs
Type of program Country Leakage to Non-needy
Untargeted Food Subsidies Egypt (early 1980s) High (60-80)
Untargeted Food Subsides Brazil High (81)
Untargeted Food Rations (I.e., ratio shops) India, Pakistan High (50-60)
Self-targeting Food Rations Bangladesh (sorghum), Pakistan Low (10-20)
Food Stamps- Targeted by Income Colombia, Sri Lanka (post- 1979), United States Low-Moderate (10-30)
Supplementation Schemes- On-site, most Vulnerable Group Targeting India, Tamil Nadu Low (3-10)
Targeted Food for Education program (free ration for school enrollment of children Bangladesh Low (8-14)
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Key Design Features of a Good Public Works Program

• The wage rate should be set at a level
• Restrictions on eligibility should be avoided
• If rationing is required, program should be
  targeted to poor areas
• The labor intensity should be as high as possible
• Public works should be synchronized to the timing
  of agricultural slack seasons
• Provision of childcare or preschool services can
  improve participation by women
• Transaction costs to the poor are kept low
• The program should include an asset maintenance
  component

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Targeting An overview

• The benefits of targeting
• The costs of Targeting
• Measuring targeting performance
• Classifying targeting methods

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The International evidence on targeting outcomes

• Database Construction
• Programs Identified
• Indicators of targeting performance
• Descriptive analysis
• Regression analysis
• Caveats and limitations
• Summary

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Implementing targeting methods

• Mean tests
• Proxy means tests
• Community based targeting
• Geographic targeting
• Demographic targeting
• Self-targeting
• Some generic issues

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Several possible roles for safety nets in very
poor countries

• To fill in the deepest part of the poverty gap
• To bring all (or many) of the poor up to an
  acceptable consumption level
• To smooth consumption (e.g., seasonally)
• To protect against major shocks
• To insure against individual risks, either
  idiosyncratic ones such as income loss, or those
  that allow the poor to take on riskier, but
  higher return, activities
• As an investment (to avoid decapitalization and
  to keep children in school)

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Global Hunger Index -2010
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Capacity Development?

• Translate policies and programs into action
• Build capacity for local governance
• Empowering rural youth
• Ride the new wave of high Value agriculture
• Public-Private partnership

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Thank you..