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Savings have been shown to have a positive impact on economic growth at the macroeconomic level. But, the micro-level analysis of households" savings behavior is limited, especially in Sub-Saharan African economies. This study contributes to the understanding of the savings behavior of households in Africa, by modeling the savings behavior of households" in Ethiopia with the two-part model. The results of the study reveal that number of extension contacts and access to market information have significant positive effects on the likelihood that a household would save. Moreover, land holdings (bad production season last year) have significant positive (adverse) impact on the expected amount of money a household would save. Based on the results of this study, policies are recommended to increase savings in Ethiopia.

Obesity poses lots of health risks in both developing and developed countries. One thing that remains unclear is the relationship between family income and weight gain. This paper explores the relationship between family income and Body Mass Index (BMI) given variations in individual choice towards basic consumption and life quality improvement consumption as income increases. We use a nationally representative longitudinal data from China, the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS), to estimate the relationship between income and weight gain. We conduct both cross sectional and panel data analysis to study the causal effects of family income on weight development. Unlike other literature that found inverse relationship between prevalence of obesity and family income in developing countries, in this paper, we find that BMI will first increase with family income at a decreasing rate, and then decrease which suggests that the group of middle class may suffer the high risk of being overweight and obese.

Millions of people in developing and middle-income countries continue to experience food insecurity daily. A growing number of studies have associated food insecurity with poorer health outcomes using cross sectional data and household level data. Few of these studies have looked at longitudinal relationship between food insecurity and health outcomes. This study analyses the relationship between food insecurity and child health outcomes in middle and low-income countries using a longitudinal macro level data. The study also introduces two unique instrumental variables, size of arable land and openness to trade, to estimate this relationship. The regressions confirm previous study results that food insecurity has a significant positive relationship with child anemia and child mortality. Food insecurity has a significant negative relationship with life expectancy. Using the instrumental variable approach shows that the estimates are greater than when no instruments are used. Our work suggests that previous studies have underestimated the impact of food insecurity on child health outcomes.