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Who we are

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.

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. 

Where we work

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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.

Reduce Poverty and End Hunger and Malnutrition

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Jordi Ruiz Cirera/Panos

What’s New


Journal Article

Experimental measures of intra-household resource control

2024Ambler, Kate; Jones, Kelly; Recalde, María P.

Experimental measures of intra-household resource control

We study experimental measures of preferences for intra-household resource control among 3387 couples in Ghana and Uganda. We implement two incentivized tasks: (1) a game that measures willingness to pay for resource control in the household, and (2) dictator games played privately and jointly by spouses. Across study sites we find that women exhibit a higher willingness to pay for resource control than their husbands and have less influence over joint dictator game decisions. Importantly, behavior in the two tasks is correlated, suggesting that they capture similar underlying latent variables. In Uganda, experimental measures from both tasks are also robustly correlated with a range of survey measures of women’s access to resources, agency, and wellbeing. This is not the case in Ghana, suggesting that contextual factors may be important, and researchers may want to collect both measures in a project. Like other recent papers, we find that an important fraction of respondents display negative willingness to pay for intra-household resource control. Our analysis shows that such behavior is displayed by women who have higher levels of economic empowerment and wellbeing, a result that contradicts previous conjectures made in the literature. Altogether, our analysis suggests that, despite lacking ideal theoretical properties, private dictator game decisions (even when collected only from the wife) can perform well as proxies of empowerment. JEL Codes: C9, D13, J12, J16

Year published

2024

Authors

Ambler, Kate; Jones, Kelly; Recalde, María P.

Citation

Ambler, Kate; Jones, Kelly; and Recalde, María P. 2024. Experimental measures of intra-household resource control. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 227(November 2024): 106705. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2024.106705

Country/Region

Ghana; Uganda

Keywords

Africa; Eastern Africa; Western Africa; Bargaining Power; Decision Making; Households; Women’s Empowerment; Gender; Women

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Project

Policies, Institutions, and Markets

Record type

Journal Article

Journal Article

The demographic transition and rural industrialization in China

2024Huang, Qing; Xie, Yu; Zhang, Xiaobo

The demographic transition and rural industrialization in China

Year published

2024

Authors

Huang, Qing; Xie, Yu; Zhang, Xiaobo

Citation

Huang, Qing; Xie, Yu; and Zhang, Xiaobo. 2024. The demographic transition and rural industrialization in China. Economic Development and Cultural Change 72(4): 1863–1892. https://doi.org/10.1086/725727

Country/Region

China

Keywords

Asia; South-eastern Asia; Demographic Transition; Economics; Industrialization; Rural Areas

Language

English

Access/Licence

Limited Access

Record type

Journal Article

Journal Article

Men can cook: Effectiveness of a men’s engagement intervention to change attitudes and behaviors in rural Ethiopia

2025Alderman, Harold; Gilligan, Daniel O.; Hidrobo, Melissa; Leight, Jessica; Mulford, Michael; Tambet, Heleene

Men can cook: Effectiveness of a men’s engagement intervention to change attitudes and behaviors in rural Ethiopia

Graduation model interventions seek to address multiple barriers constraining households’ exit from poverty, however, few explicitly target restrictive gender norms. Using a randomized controlled trial design, combined with three rounds of data, we investigate the impacts on gender equitable attitudes and behaviors of a graduation program that seeks to address multiple constraints for those in poverty and improve restrictive gender norms in Ethiopia. We find that at 1-year follow-up all treatment arms lead to improvements in men’s gender equitable attitudes and their engagement in household domestic tasks as reported by both men and women; but at 3-year follow-up, impacts are only sustained in the treatment arms that introduced men’s engagement groups after the 1-year follow-up survey to further promote improvements in equitable gender norms.

Year published

2025

Authors

Alderman, Harold; Gilligan, Daniel O.; Hidrobo, Melissa; Leight, Jessica; Mulford, Michael; Tambet, Heleene

Citation

Alderman, Harold; Gilligan, Daniel O.; Hidrobo, Melissa; Leight, Jessica; Mulford, Michael; and Tambet, Heleene. 2024. Men can cook: Effectiveness of a men’s engagement intervention to change attitudes and behaviors in rural Ethiopia. World Development 185(January 2025): 106781.

Country/Region

Ethiopia

Keywords

Africa; Eastern Africa; Behaviour; Cooking; Men; Rural Areas

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Project

Gender Equality

Record type

Journal Article

The 2024 Global Food Policy Report

Food systems and diets underpin many critical challenges to public health and environmental sustainability, including malnutrition, noncommunicable diseases, and climate change, but healthy diets have the unique potential to reshape the future for both human and planetary well-being. Drawing on recent evidence and experience, the 2024 Global Food Policy Report highlights opportunities for transforming food systems to ensure sustainable healthy diets for all.

Experts in Our Field

IFPRI’s experts work around the world to provide the evidence that supports effective policies to reduce poverty and end malnutrition.

600+

staff across the world

80+

countries where we work

#1

in the field of Agricultural Economics

20,000+

research outputs

Meet a Researcher

Agnes Quisumbing is a Senior Research Fellow in the Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion Unit. She co-leads a research program that examines how closing the gap between men’s and women’s ownership and control of assets may lead to better development outcomes. She is currently engaged in impact evaluations of agricultural development programs, focusing on their impacts on gender asset inequality, in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Her past work at IFPRI analyzed the factors that enable individuals, households, and communities to…

Agnes Quisumbing

From our video channel

In this interview with RFD-TV, Purnima Menon, Senior Director, Food and Nutrition Policy, CGIAR and IFPRI, discusses what UNGA and Climate Week meetings mean for agriculture, and why it’s important for global leaders to prioritize agricultural innovation as they make decisions about how to address climate change and other global issues. She also highlights CGIAR’s scientific research benefits farmers both in the US and abroad.

Our Events

Making a Difference Blog Series

For more than three decades, IFPRI has worked with the Government of Ethiopia to provide evidence-based advice on the development of the country’s agricultural sector.

IFPRI’s research and policy recommendations led to the establishment of Ethiopia’s Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA) in 2010, which continues to play a critical role in guiding the country’s agricultural development and sustainability.

Tamsin Zandstra, Gashaw T. Abate, Shahidur Rashid, and Nicholas Minot outline how IFPRI’s long-term strategic research support to the ATA has led to several tangible government policy outcomes.