Prices, Credit Markets and Child Growth in Low-Income Rural Areas

Foster, Andrew D.

doi:10.2307/2235017

Cited by 167 publications

(116 citation statements)

References 11 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

113

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Jacoby and Skoufias (1997) find that in South India (ICRISAT-villages) children are often taken out of school in response to adverse income shocks; the result is lower accumulation of human capital. Foster (1995) shows that child growth was affected during and after the severe floods in Bangladesh in 1988. He does not find evidence of a sex bias.…”

Section: Risk Household Responses and Consequencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Income Risk, Coping Strategies, and Safety Nets

Dercon

2002

The World Bank Research Observer

758

545

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

High income risk is part of life in developing countries. Climatic risks, economic fluctuations, but also a large number of individual-specific shocks make these households vulnerable to serious hardship. For example, details are given on the various shocks and events causing serious hardship to rural households in Ethiopia in the last twenty years. Not surprisingly for Ethiopia, climatic events are the most common cause of shocks, but many households suffer from other common or idiosyncratic shocks related to economic policy, labour or livestock.Rural and urban households in developing countries face substantial risk. Households in risky environments have developed sophisticated (ex ante) risk-management and (ex post) risk-coping strategies, including self-insurance via savings and informal insurance mechanisms while formal credit and insurance markets appear to contribute only little to reducing income risk and its consequences. Despite these strategies, vulnerability to poverty linked to risk remains high. In this paper, I focus on the opportunities available to households to use risk-management and risk-coping strategies, and on the constraints on their effectiveness, by reviewing some of the recent literature on savings as insurance, income diversification and smoothing, and informal risk-sharing arrangements. Risk and lumpiness limit the opportunities to use assets as insurance. Entry constraints limit the usefulness of income diversification. Informal risk-sharing only provides limited protection, especially for some of the poor and their sustainability during periods of change is in doubt. Public safety nets are likely to be beneficial, but their impact is at times limited while they may have negative externalities on households not covered by the safety net. The paper also discusses the implications for policy as well as the information requirements to increase our understanding of vulnerability and implement better vulnerability reducing policies.

show abstract

Section: Risk Household Responses and Consequencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Income Risk, Coping Strategies, and Safety Nets

Dercon

2002

The World Bank Research Observer

758

545

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…While all households are negatively affected by uninsured shocks, relatively poorer households are likely to lack the necessary human and physical capital to recover from them (Del Ninno and Marini, 2005). Some shocks can have long-lasting effects leading to chronic poverty (Dercon, 2004;Dercon, Hoddinott and Woldehanna, 2005) and adverse human development outcomes (Foster, 1995;Jacoby and Skoufias, 1997;Jensen, 2000).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Do the Poor Cope with Shocks in Bangladesh? Evidence from Survey Data

Rahman¹,

Santos²,

Zaman³

et al. 2011

Policy Research Working Papers

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…3 Changes in child weight for height are negatively correlated with changes in rice prices in Bangladesh (Foster, 1990). Higher sugar and dairy prices are associated with lower height for age in Brazil .…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Public policy and anthropometric outcomes in the Côte d'Ivoire

Thomas

Lavy

Strauss

1996

Journal of Public Economics

121

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractUsing data from the Cote d'Ivoire, we examine the impact of public policies on three anthropometric outcomes: height for age and weight for height of children as well as body mass index of adults. During the eighties, low growth rates in the Cote d'Ivoire were accompanied by an economic adjustment program which included substantial cuts in public spending together with increases in the relative price of foods. If reductions in social spending resulted in lower availability and quality of health care services, then our results suggest that child health (particularly height for age) will have been adversely affected. The provision of basic services (such as immunizations) and ensuring facilities are equipped with simple materials (such as having basic drugs in stock) will yield high social returns in terms of improved child health. Food prices have tended to rise in the Cote d'Ivoire during the eighties and we find that higher food prices have had a significantly detrimental impact on the health of Ivorian children (as measured by weight for height) and adults (as indicated by lower body mass indices). In contrast, the effects of income on health are significant but quite small, except in the case of adult women.

show abstract

Prices, Credit Markets and Child Growth in Low-Income Rural Areas

Cited by 167 publications

References 11 publications

Income Risk, Coping Strategies, and Safety Nets

Income Risk, Coping Strategies, and Safety Nets

How Do the Poor Cope with Shocks in Bangladesh? Evidence from Survey Data

Public policy and anthropometric outcomes in the Côte d'Ivoire

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About