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Socio Economic Research and Analysis (SERA)

Socio Economic Research and Analysis

FAO recognizes the importance of rigorous evidence to guide policy choices and investments to achieve the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development. The Socio-Economic Research and Analysis (SERA) Team of the Rural Transformation and Gender Equality Division (ESP) supports Member States to identify policies and programmes to foster resilient and inclusive agri-food system transformations through the generation, coordination, and dissemination of rigorous evidence.

The hallmark of the SERA team's strategic research agenda is an explicit focus on identifying policy options to address the socio-economic barriers and constraints faced by rural populations living in poverty or subject to other forms of structural vulnerability.

The team draws on a variety of methodological approaches and data sets, and leverages a range of strategic partnerships, to inform global and national policy debates on the importance of prioritizing inclusive approaches to rural development in the context of an increasingly uncertain world.

Rural Transformation and Gender Equality Division (ESP)

Social Protection and Rural Development

IN FOCUS
The unjust climate

This report assembles an impressive set of data from 24 low- and middle-income countries in five world regions to measure the effects of climate change on rural women, youths and people living in poverty. It analyses socioeconomic data collected from 109 341 rural households (representing over 950 million rural people) in these 24 countries. These data are combined in both space and time with 70 years of georeferenced data on daily precipitation and temperatures. The data enable us to disentangle how different types of climate stressors affect people’s on-farm, off-farm and total incomes, labour allocations and adaptive actions, depending on their wealth, gender and age characteristics.

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Publications
Wellbeing dynamics in sub-Saharan Africa: a spatial perspective across territorial typologies
2025

Efforts to track welfare trends and spatially target interventions in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) have been constrained by a lack of recurrent and sufficiently...

The agrifood-system wage gap and structural transformation: cross-country evidence
2025

This study examines how the gender pay gap in wage employment evolves during structural transformation. Using a multi-country dataset and decomposition...

Natural resources for resilient, inclusive rural transformation
2025

This paper examines the role of natural resources in fostering resilient and inclusive rural transformation. It reviews land and water availability...

Climate adaptation, perceived resilience, and household wellbeing: Comparative evidence from Kenya and Zambia
2025

This study examines how climate-adaptive agricultural practices influence perceived resilience and household wellbeing in pastoralist Kenya and rain-fed...

News

Tackling the gender gap is crucial to fight food insecurity and the climate crisis

05/03/2024
The groundbreaking FAO report “The Unjust Climate: Measuring the impacts of climate change on the rural poor, women and youth” shows that climate change disproportionately impacts women farmers in low- and middle-income countries. In this interview, Lauren Phillips, Deputy Director of the Rural Transformation and Gender Equality Division of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), says this gender gap causes billions of dollars of losses among female-headed farming households and widens the income gap among the rural poor.

Tackling the gender gap is crucial to fight food insecurity and the climate crisis

05/03/2024