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The video shows the results and impacts the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme is having in Ghana. LEAP is a cash transfer programme for the poorest families in Ghana to reduce poverty and enhance long term human development. LEAP is managed by Ghana's Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection. The University of North Carolina and the Institute for Statistical, Social and Economic Research at the University of Ghana carried out the impact evaluation, in conjunction with UNICEF and FAO's PtoP team.

Cash transfer programmes in sub-Saharan Africa impact the productive activities of both beneficiary and non-beneficiary households in the communities where they are implemented. These programmes have led to an increase in agricultural activities in beneficiary households, including greater use of agricultural inputs, more land area in crop production and higher crop output. Beneficiary households have increased ownership of livestock and agricultural tools, as well as a greater tendency to participate in non-farm family enterprises. Moreover, households that receive transfers tend to reallocate their labour away from casual agricultural wage labour to household-managed economic activities. In almost all countries, cash transfers have allowed beneficiary households to avoid negative [...]

This framework outlines the potential of agriculture to improve nutrition, sets out the guiding principles and provides a joint strategic response for shaping policy dialogue and ensuring alignment in the design of policies and operational programmes in agriculture and nutrition.

The poor are particularly vulnerable to the negative effects of high and volatile food prices. Available evidence, while not conclusive, indicates that both urban and rural poor, including poor farmers, are particularly exposed because they are typically net buyers of food (Ivanic and Martin, 2008). Food accounts for as much as three-quarters of the expenditures of poor households in some countries.

Identifies the links between decent employment and food security and shows how improving policy coherence between employment and agricultural initiatives and investing more in the promotion of decent rural employment will contribute highly to the interlinked challenges of fighting rural poverty and feeding a growing world population in a sustainable way.

Childrens participation in their own family farm activities helps them learn valuable skills and contribute  to the generation of household income, which has a positive impact on their livelihoods. Such participation is important for children and builds their self-esteem. Because of poverty, the breakdown of the family, the demand for cheap labour, family indebtedness,  household shocks due to HIV and other reasons, many younger children end up doing work that  poses a risk to their physical and psychological development or to their right to formal education. The prevention and mitigation of child labour has always been an implicit element of [...]

The number of undernourished people in the world remains unacceptably high at close to one billion in 2010 despite an expected decline – the first in 15 years. This decline is largely attributable to a more favourable economic environment in 2010 – particularly in developing countries – and the fall in both international and domestic food prices since 2008.  FAO estimates that a total of 925 million people are undernourished in 2010 compared with 1.023 billion in 2009. Most of the decrease was in Asia, with 80 million fewer hungry, but progress was also made in sub-Saharan Africa, where 12 million [...]

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 paper introduces the key principles and methods related to socio-economic and livelihoods analysis in investment planning. It includes a discussion of the importance of understanding the constraints of the rural poor in identification and preparation of investment programmes. It explains the processes of identifying the constraints of the rural poor, the extent and nature of their vulnerability, and their coping strategies in times of food shortage. In addition, it provides an understanding of the roles/functions of rural institutions and presents some methods used in community analysis. Finally, it discusses the implications of socio-economic and livelihoods analysis for the design [...]

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. [...]