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The report intends to examine the short-term measures adopted by some 81 countries and is intended for policy makers and analysts.    Prices of staple foods, such as rice and vegetable oil, have doubled between January and May 2008. High food prices together with record petroleum and fertilizer prices have spurred inflation. Poorer households with a larger share of food in their total expenditures are suffering the most from high food prices, due to the erosion of purchasing power, which has a  negative impact on food security, nutrition and access to school and health services. Higher prices also result in [...]

The rural sector’s lack of resilience to climatic accidents seems to be one of the main reasons for the transformation of climatic accidents into environmental, economic and social disasters for local communities. Thus, the integration of activities geared towards the improvement of community resilience seems to be of utmost priority. This can be achieved by integrating prevention and risk-management tools into already existing social safety-nets within the framework of food security and poverty reduction strategies. “Social protection initiatives are as much at risk from climate change as other development approaches. They are unlikely to succeed in reducing poverty if they do [...]

After sketching the mutual links between economic growth, agriculture, technology, poverty reduction and external factors, this paper analyses the implications of recent international price shocks on welfare and growth, notably energy and agricultural products, for Burkina Faso, a less industrialised, low-income, food-deficit, net oil-importing country. The socio-economic impacts of the above-mentioned external shocks are analysed by means of a Computable General Equilibrium model (CGE). The paper also discusses the extent to which technological changes in agriculture, specifically the introduction of “Good Agricultural Practices” (GAP) towards “conservation agriculture”, could mitigate the welfare and growth losses derived by international price shocks.  Additionally, it is shown [...]

This issue paper aims at introducing selected analytical approaches for quantitative analysis of the socio-economic impacts of policies. In the first part of the document, after considering a set of basic questions that a quantitative policy impact analysis has usually to address in order to be useful for informing decision-making processes; some definitions and insights on policy-relevant elements such as policy objectives, policy instruments and impact models are provided. The document then briefly describes the use of counterfactual analysis for socio-economic policy impact analysis. The second part of the work focuses on the review of selected quantitative analytical approaches frequently applied [...]

Food security is still largely misconceived as exclusively a matter of increased food production. As a result, comprehensive strategic approaches to hunger reduction have been insufficient. With this in mind, in 2004, through the FAO Netherlands Partnership Programme (FNPP), FAO began assisting several countries, namely Bhutan, Cambodia, Kenya, Mozambique and Zanzibar in integrating a specific and comprehensive food security and nutrition focus into their poverty reduction strategies or other national development frameworks. Through the fruitful collaboration between FAO and counterpart governments under the FNPP, each of the above-mentioned countries is now including food security and nutrition into major national policy [...]

This analytical tool illustrates the concept of social welfare and the possible ways to define social welfare functions. In particular, it deals with how to pass from inequality to social welfare analysis and how social welfare analysis may embody different attitudes with regard to inequality aversion. A step-by-step procedure and numerical examples are also discussed to give operational content to the tool. For more information, see also: Charting Income Inequality. The Lorenz Curve. EASYPol Series 000 Social Welfare Analysis of Income Distributions: Ranking Income Distributions with Lorenz Curves. EASYPol Series 001 Social Welfare Analysis of Income Distributions: Ranking Income Distributions with Generalised Lorenz Curves. [...]

This module illustrates the simplest ways to measure inequality drawing on the statistical concepts of location, shape and variability. In particular, the following measures will be addressed: a) the range; b) the relative mean deviation; c) the variance; d) the coefficient of variation; and e) the standard deviation of logharitms. For all these measures, step-by-step procedures and numerical examples are also discussed. For more information, see also: Charting Income Inequality. The Lorenz Curve. EASYPol Series 000 Social Welfare Analysis of Income Distributions: Ranking Income Distributions with Lorenz Curves. EASYPol Series 001 Policy Impacts on Inequality: Inequality and Axioms for its Measurement. EASYPol Series 054 This [...]

This tool illustrates the concept of desirable properties any inequality index should respect. In particular, it introduces the distinction between a positive and a normative approach to inequality analysis. Then, it discusses the role of axioms in inequality measurement and their conceptual meaning. Finally, using the Gini Index and the variance, a step-by-step procedure and numerical examples are introduced for operational purposes. For further information, see also: Charting Income Inequality. The Lorenz Curve. EASYPol Series 000 Social Welfare Analysis of Income Distributions: Ranking Income Distributions with Lorenz Curves. EASYPol Series 001 Inequality Analysis: The Gini Index. EASYPol Series 040 Social Welfare Analysis of Income Distributions: [...]

This analytical tool illustrates how to decompose inequality measures by income sources. In particular, it discusses this decomposition in the context of the Gini and the Theil Indexes. A step-by-step procedure and numerical examples give operational content to the tool. For further information, see also: Charting Income Inequality. The Lorenz Curve. EASYPol Series 000 Social Welfare Analysis of Income Distributions: Ranking Income Distributions with Lorenz Curves. EASYPol Series 001 Inequality Analysis: The Gini Index. EASYPol Series 040 Describing Income Inequality. Theil Index and Entropy Class Indexes. EASYPol Series 051 Policy Impacts on Inequality: Decomposition of Income Inequality by Subgroups. EASYPol Series 052 This paper is part of [...]

This analytical tool illustrates how to decompose inequality measures by subgroups of populations. In particular, it defines the concepts of within and between inequality and analyses how different inequality indexes perform with respect to this decomposition. In particular, the performance of the analysis of variance, the Gini Index and the Theil Index will be discussed. A step-by-step procedure and numerical examples give operational content to the tool. For further information, see also: Charting Income Inequality. The Lorenz Curve. EASYPol Series 000 Social Welfare Analysis of Income Distributions: Ranking Income Distributions with Lorenz Curves. EASYPol Series 001 Inequality Analysis: The Gini Index. EASYPol Series 040 Describing [...]