Abstract With Lao PDR’s macroeconomic performance currently booming, we investigate the country’s poverty situation by examining the drivers of household poverty. This paper tests four major hypotheses: (1) Whether higher returns on all crops harvested per capita reduce consumption...

Abstract As the countdown to 2015 has begun, debates about the continuation of the MDGs and their reformulation have taken on greater urgency and significance. Our view is that there is a need to reformulate them to better reflect deprivations and inequities that are pervasive but not...

Abstract India has one of the highest underweight burdens in the world, with signs of rising obesity. Coexistence of underweight and overweight women is symptomatic of the double burden of malnutrition. The present study aims to throw new light on the double burden of malnutrition among Indian...

Abstract The present study seeks to build on earlier work by identifying the factors associated with the frequency of natural disasters and the resulting mortality. Drawing together the main findings, some observations are made from a policy perspective to focus on key elements of a disaster...

The present study examines how and why ethnic minorities are poorer than ethnic majorities in Vietnam using the VHLSS data for 2002 and 2004. First, the analysis confirms that households belonging to the ethnic minority groups are not only poorer but also more vulnerable to various shocks than...

Much of recent work has raised the issue that the surge in prices of foodgrains in the last two years cannot be explained satisfactorily in terms of the fundamentals of supply and demand. It has also been suggested that the part that cannot be explained in this way is due largely to speculation....

This paper examines the extent to which changes in global agricultural commodity price are transmitted to domestic prices in India and China. The focus is on short and medium-run adjustment processes using an error correction specification. In particular, we show that the extent of adjustment in...

Abstract Based on cross-country datasets, we find that (i) development of the rural agricultural sector is the most poverty reducing; (ii) rural non-agricultural sector also is poverty reducing in some cases, but its magnitude is much smaller than that associated with the rural agricultural...

Abstract Drawing upon a cross-country panel data for developing countries, the present study sheds new empirical light on dynamic and long-term linkages among growth, inequality and poverty. First, agricultural sector growth is found to be consistently the most important factor in reducing...

Rising food prices played an important role in the acceleration of inflation across Asia and the Pacific region during 2007 and the early months of 2008. Not only is food price inflation the most regressive of all taxes, it also leads to lower growth and accentuation of income inequality....