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With research staff from more than 60 countries, and offices across the globe, IFPRI provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries.

researcher spotlight

Kalyani Raghunathan

Kalyani Raghunathan is Research Fellow in the Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion Unit, based in New Delhi, India. Her research lies at the intersection of agriculture, gender, social protection, and public health and nutrition, with a specific focus on South Asia and Africa. 

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Where we work

IFPRI currently has more than 600 employees working in over 80 countries with a wide range of local, national, and international partners.

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experts

Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion

John Hoddinott

Nonresident Fellow

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Bio

John Hoddinott is a Nonresident Fellow in the Poverty Health and Nutrition Division. He is also H.E. Babcock Professor of Food & Nutrition Economics and Policy, Cornell University. He was formerly a deputy director of the Poverty Health and Nutrition Division of IFPRI. A Canadian citizen, Hoddinott holds a B.A. in economics from the University of Toronto, an M.A. from York University and a D.Phil. in Economics from the University of Oxford.

His principal research interest lies in the microeconometric analysis of issues in development economics. John is especially interested in the causes of poverty, food insecurity and undernutrition, and the design and evaluation of interventions that would reduce these. Much of his current research has focused on the determinants and consequences of human capital formation. This builds on his earlier work on modeling the processes of intra-household resource allocation and on labor markets. John has also had involvement in discussions surrounding aid flows, responses to the 2008 food price crisis and reforms to the global food security architecture such as the Food Aid Convention.

Publications

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Publications

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Working Paper

Does nutrition-sensitive social protection protection build longer-term resilience? Experimental evidence from Bangladesh

2024Ahmed, Akhter U.; Bakhtiar, M. Mehrab; Hoddinott, John; Roy, Shalini
Details

Does nutrition-sensitive social protection protection build longer-term resilience? Experimental evidence from Bangladesh

Evidence shows that cash and in-kind transfer programs increase food security while interventions are ongoing, including during or immediately after shocks. But less is known about whether receipt of these programs can have protective effects for household food security against shocks that occur several years after interventions end. We study the effects of a transfer program implemented as a cluster-randomized control trial in rural Bangladesh from 2012-2014 – the Transfer Modality Research Initiative (TMRI) – on food security in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. We assess TMRI’s impacts at three post-program time points: before the shock (2018), amidst the shock (2021), and after the immediate effects of the shock (2022). We find that TMRI showed protective effects on household food security during and after the pandemic, but program design features “mattered”; positive impacts were only seen in the treatment arm that combined cash transfers with nutrition behavior change communication (Cash+BCC). Other treatment arms – cash only, and food only – showed no significant sustained effects on our household food security measures after the intervention ended, nor did they show protective effects during the pandemic. A plausible mechanism is that investments made by Cash+BCC households in productive assets – specifically livestock – increased their pre-shock resilience capacity.

Year published

2024

Authors

Ahmed, Akhter U.; Bakhtiar, M. Mehrab; Hoddinott, John; Roy, Shalini

Citation

Ahmed, Akhter U.; Bakhtiar, M. Mehrab; Hoddinott, John; and Roy, Shalini. 2024. Does nutrition-sensitive social protection protection build longer-term resilience? Experimental evidence from Bangladesh. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2282. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/155053

Country/Region

Bangladesh

Keywords

Asia; Southern Asia; Covid-19; Resilience; Shock; Social Protection

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Project

Gender Equality

Record type

Working Paper

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Working Paper

Estimating multidimensional development resilience

2024Lee, Seungmin; Abay, Kibrom A.; Barrett, Christopher B.; Hoddinott, John F.
Details

Estimating multidimensional development resilience

Resilience measurement has received substantial attention over the past decade or so. Existing measures, however, relate resilience to a single well-being indicator. This may be problematic in contexts where households face deprivations in multiple dimensions. We explore how sensitive estimates of household-level resilience are to the specific well-being indicator used and show that measures are only weakly correlated across different, reasonable indicators based on expenditure-based poverty, dietary diversity, and livestock asset holdings. We then introduce a multidimensional resilience measure, integrating the probabilistic moment-based resilience measurement approach of Cissé and Barrett (2018) with the multidimensional poverty measurement method of Alkire and Foster (2011). Applying the new method to household panel data, we show that univariate and multidimensional resilience measures can yield varied inferences on the ranking of households as well as potential impact of development interventions.

Year published

2024

Authors

Lee, Seungmin; Abay, Kibrom A.; Barrett, Christopher B.; Hoddinott, John F.

Citation

Lee, Seungmin; Abay, Kibrom A.; Barrett, Christopher B.; and Hoddinott, John F. 2024. Estimating multidimensional development resilience. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2268. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/151999

Country/Region

Ethiopia

Keywords

Africa; Eastern Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Assets; Consumption; Dietary Diversity; Livestock; Nutrition; Poverty; Resilience

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Project

National Policies and Strategies

Record type

Working Paper

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Journal Article

Increasing production diversity and diet quality: Evidence from Bangladesh

2024Ahmed, Akhter; Coleman, Fiona M.; Ghostlaw, Julie; Hoddinott, John F.; Menon, Purnima; Parvin, Aklima; Pereira, Audrey; Quisumbing, Agnes R.; Roy, Shalini; Younus, Masuma
Details

Increasing production diversity and diet quality: Evidence from Bangladesh

In the context of rural Bangladesh, we assess whether agriculture training alone, nutrition behavior communication change (BCC) alone, combined agriculture training and nutrition BCC, or agriculture training and nutrition BCC combined with gender sensitization improve: (a) production diversity, either on household fields or through crop, livestock, or aquaculture activities carried out near the family homestead; and (b) diet diversity and the quality of household diets. All treatment arms were implemented by government employees. Implementation quality was high. No treatment increased production diversification of crops grown on fields. Treatment arms with agricultural training did increase the number of different crops grown in homestead gardens and the likelihood of any egg, dairy, or fish production but the magnitudes of these effect sizes were small. All agricultural treatment arms had, in percentage terms, large effects on measures of levels of homestead production. However, because baseline levels of production were low, the magnitude of these changes in absolute terms was modest. Nearly all treatment arms improved measures of food consumption and diet with the largest effects found when nutrition and agriculture training were combined. Relative to treatments combining agriculture and nutrition training, we find no significant impact of adding the gender sensitization on our measures of production diversity or diet quality. Interventions that combine agricultural training and nutrition BCC can improve both production diversity and diet quality, but they are not a panacea. They can, however, contribute toward better diets of rural households.

Year published

2024

Authors

Ahmed, Akhter; Coleman, Fiona M.; Ghostlaw, Julie; Hoddinott, John F.; Menon, Purnima; Parvin, Aklima; Pereira, Audrey; Quisumbing, Agnes R.; Roy, Shalini; Younus, Masuma

Citation

Ahmed, Akhter; Coleman, Fiona; Ghostlaw, Julie; Hoddinott, John F.; Menon, Purnima; Parvin, Aklima; et al. 2024. Increasing production diversity and diet quality: Evidence from Bangladesh. American Journal of Agricultural Economics 106(3): 1089-1110. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajae.12427

Country/Region

Bangladesh

Keywords

Asia; Southern Asia; Agriculture; Agricultural Training; Nutrition; Behaviour; Communication; Gender; Diversification; Production; Dietary Diversity; Aquaculture; Rural Areas; Households

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1111/ajae.12427 Source record

Project

Transforming Agrifood Systems in South Asia

Record type

Journal Article

Blogs

Ethiopia’s social safety net effective in limiting COVID-19 impacts on rural food insecurity
IFPRI Blog
 | 
January 28, 2021

Ethiopia’s social safety net effective in limiting COVID-19 impacts on rural food insecurity

By Kibrom A. Abay, Guush Berhane, John Hoddinott, and Kibrom Tafere

A survey shows such programs can be effective in addressing the impacts of sudden shocks.

Impact study demonstrates Bt brinjal eggplant variety helps farmers in Bangladesh earn more with less pesticide
IFPRI Blog
 | 
October 18, 2019

Impact study demonstrates Bt brinjal eggplant variety helps farmers in Bangladesh earn more with less pesticide

By Akhter Ahmed, John Hoddinott, Paul Tanger, and Lesley Perlman

A new genetically-engineered pest-resistant eggplant variety shows promise.

Rohingya in Bangladesh are surviving – but their long-term prospects are grim
IFPRI Blog
 | 
July 02, 2019

Rohingya in Bangladesh are surviving – but their long-term prospects are grim

By Paul Dorosh and John Hoddinott

Aid efforts have averted a potential humanitarian disaster. Needed now – a long-term solution.

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Events

The Forced Exile of Rohingyas into Bangladesh: Economic and Nutritional Outcomes and Future Policy Options
IFPRI Policy Seminar

 | 

July 10, 2019, 12:15 – 1:45 pm

The Forced Exile of Rohingyas into Bangladesh: Economic and Nutritional Outcomes and Future Policy Options

More than 600,000 Rohingya people fled violence in Myanmar in 2017 and crossed into southeastern Bangladesh, joining 200,000 to 400,000 other forcibly displaced Myanmar nationals.   This seminar will include analysis of incomes, employment, food security, and nutrition based on a household survey conducted in camps housing Rohingyas and in neighboring host communities. Model simulations […]

News

September 16, 2020 | In the News

Indian farmers can’t wait anymore, they are sowing seeds of GM crops one Bt brinjal at a time (The Print)

The Print (India) published an article on how the Modi govt’s nod to field trials of two brinjal varieties comes after years of delayed decisions, leaving farmers to deal with daily risks of agriculture. Whereas the projects failed in India, Bangladesh picked up where India left off.  IFPRI, together with the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI), carried out […]

October 24, 2019 | Press Release

NEW STUDY: Food markets near Ethiopia’s poor provide too little diversity at too high a price for optimum child health

Washington, D.C.: The rural poor in Ethiopia tend to live near lower-quality markets that sell fewer food groups at high prices, adversely impacting the health of children in these communities, a new study from researchers at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) has found. The findings, drawn from data from rural Ethiopia, mark the […]

October 11, 2019 | In the News

Merit of Bt brinjal technology

The Financial Express (India) published an op-ed by Abdul Bayer who wrote it’s time to pay more attention to non-rice crops. IFPRI, in a coauthored paper by Akhter Ahmed, John Hoddinott, Naveen Abedin, Nusrat Hossain discussed the results of the GM crop eggplant. It looked at pesticide use, infestation, net yields, and health.

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