Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Does Food Aid Harm the Poor? Household Evidence from Ethiopia

Contents:

Author Info

  • James Levinsohn
  • Margaret McMillan

Abstract

This paper uses household-level data from Ethiopia to investigate the impact of food aid on the poor. We find that food aid in Ethiopia is "pro-poor." Our results indicate that (i) net buyers of wheat are poorer than net sellers of wheat, (ii) there are more buyers of wheat than sellers of wheat at all levels of income, (iii) the proportion of net sellers is increasing in living standards and (iv) net benefit ratios are higher for poorer households indicating that poorer households benefit proportionately more from a drop in the price of wheat. In light of this evidence, it appears that households at all levels of income benefit from food aid and that - somewhat surprisingly - the benefits go disproportionately to the poorest households.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w11048.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 11048.

as in new window
Length:
Date of creation: Jan 2005
Date of revision:
Publication status: published as James Levinsohn, Margaret McMillan. "Does Food Aid Harm the Poor? Household Evidence from Ethiopia," in Ann Harrison, editor, "Globalization and Poverty" University of Chicago Press (2007)
Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11048

Note: ITI
Contact details of provider:
Postal: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.
Phone: 617-868-3900
Email:
Web page: http://www.nber.org
More information through EDIRC

Related research

Keywords:

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
as in new window
  1. Christopher B. Barrett, 1998. "Food Aid: Is It Development Assistance, Trade Promotion, Both, or Neither?," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 80(3), pages 566-571.
  2. Christopher B. Barrett & Paul A. Dorosh, 1996. "Farmers' Welfare and Changing Food Prices: Nonparametric Evidence from Rice in Madagascar," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 78(3), pages 656-669.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
as in new window

Cited by:
  1. Ann Harrison, 2006. "Globalization and Poverty," NBER Working Papers 12347, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  2. Aisbett, Emma & Harrison, Ann & Zwane, Alix, 2006. "Globalization and poverty: what is the evidence?," MPRA Paper 36595, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  3. Lentz, Erin C. & Barrett, Christopher B., 2008. "Improving Food Aid: What Reforms Would Yield the Highest Payoff?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 36(7), pages 1152-1172, July.
  4. William Easterly, 2009. "Can the West Save Africa?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(2), pages 373-447, June.
  5. Jesse M. Cunha & Giacomo De Giorgi & Seema Jayachandran, 2011. "The Price Effects of Cash Versus In-Kind Transfers," NBER Working Papers 17456, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  6. Klugman, Jeni & Loening, Josef, 2007. "Welfare Impacts of Food Price Inflation in Ethiopia," MPRA Paper 24892, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  7. Ann Harrison & Margaret McMillan, 2007. "On the links between globalization and poverty," Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 123-134, April.
  8. Nathan Nunn & Nancy Qian, 2010. "The Determinants of Food Aid Provisions to Africa and the Developing World," NBER Working Papers 16610, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  9. Rios, Ana R. & Shively, Gerald E. & Masters, William A., 2009. "Agricultural Prices and Income Distribution among Farmers: A Whole-Household, Multi-Country, Multi-Year Analysis," 2009 Annual Meeting, July 26-28, 2009, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 49314, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
  10. Barrett, Christopher B., 2008. "Smallholder market participation: Concepts and evidence from eastern and southern Africa," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 299-317, August.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11048

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ().

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.