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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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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

Kalle Hirvonen

Senior Research Fellow

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Bio

Kalle Hirvonen is a Senior Research Fellow in the Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion Unit. ​Through his research, Kalle seeks to understand how to sustainably improve nutrition and food security outcomes in low-income countries. Thematically, this work sits at the intersection of development, health, and agricultural economics. Kalle has done extensive research in areas of social protection, agriculture-nutrition linkages, food systems, value chains, and food markets. Most of his work is based on statistical analyses of primary data from large-scale household surveys or randomized controlled trials. Kalle holds a PhD in Economics and a master’s degrees in Development Economics from the University of Sussex, UK, as well as a master’s degree in International Economics from the University of Helsinki.

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Publications

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Working Paper

MSMEs in the Food Environment in urban and peri-urban Ethiopia

2024de Brauw, Alan; Hirvonen, Kalle; Mekonnen, Daniel; Chege, Christine
Details

MSMEs in the Food Environment in urban and peri-urban Ethiopia

In late 2023, a unique survey was fielded in Ethiopia to study micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) selling food directly to consumers in two locations in Ethiopia (a woreda of Addis Ababa, and Butajira). The survey was unique as it combines a listing exercise, which attempted to list all businesses selling food directly to customers within a specific area, and a business-oriented survey, which enumerated information about management characteristics, the use of healthy foods, nutritional awareness, and the constraints businesses might face in selling more healthy foods. We find that businesses rarely follow good business practices, they have poor access to capital, and supply challenges and variable quality are major constraints to expanding their businesses. Finally, we find many vendors are not aware of nutritional content of specific foods they might sell. From the business perspective, business trainings could help vendors become better businesses, but helping deal with supply challenges earlier in the value chain could also allow them to sell more, with consistently higher quality.

Year published

2024

Authors

de Brauw, Alan; Hirvonen, Kalle; Mekonnen, Daniel; Chege, Christine

Citation

de Brauw, Alan; Hirvonen, Kalle; Mekonnen, Daniel; and Chege, Christine. 2024. MSMEs in the Food Environment in urban and peri-urban Ethiopia. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/155237

Country/Region

Ethiopia

Keywords

Africa; Eastern Africa; Enterprises; Food Environment; Nutrition; Surveys

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Project

Sustainable Healthy Diets

Record type

Working Paper

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Brief

The effectiveness of cash and cash plus interventions on livelihoods outcomes: Evidence from a systematic review and meta-analysis

2024Leight, Jessica; Hirvonen, Kalle; Zafar, Sarim
Details

The effectiveness of cash and cash plus interventions on livelihoods outcomes: Evidence from a systematic review and meta-analysis

Cash transfer programs have become increasingly popular tools for fighting chronic poverty and food insecurity in lowand middle-income countries (Fiszbein and Schady, 2009; USAID, 2022; WFP, 2023). Cash transfers offer recipients flexibility by permitting them to finance immediate consumption needs or to increase future income streams through investments and savings. Moreover, these programs are generally feasible to implement and scale across diverse contexts. While studies consistently show cash transfers effectively reduce poverty in the short term, the evidence on their long-term impact is less clear.

Year published

2024

Authors

Leight, Jessica; Hirvonen, Kalle; Zafar, Sarim

Citation

Leight, Jessica; Hirvonen, Kalle; and Zafar, Sarim. 2024. The effectiveness of cash and cash plus interventions on livelihoods outcomes: Evidence from a systematic review and meta-analysis. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute.

Keywords

Cash Transfers; Data; Consumption; Livelihoods

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Project

Fragility, Conflict, and Migration

Record type

Brief

Resource thumbnail

Working Paper

The effectiveness of cash and cash plus interventions on livelihoods outcomes: Evidence from a systematic review and meta-analysis

2024Leight, Jessica; Hirvonen, Kalle; Zafar, Sarim
Details

The effectiveness of cash and cash plus interventions on livelihoods outcomes: Evidence from a systematic review and meta-analysis

Over the last 20 years, a burgeoning scholarly literature has analyzed the effects of cash transfer and cash plus interventions in a wide range of contexts and using a range of empirical designs. We conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis to estimate the pooled effect of any cash or cash plus intervention on livelihoods-related outcomes (consumption, income and labor supply), ultimately compiling 305 different treatment estimates from 155 treatment arms in 104 studies (and in 43 countries). Using random effects and multilevel models, our findings suggest that cash transfer programming is associated with an increase of between $1 and $2 in monthly household consumption and income per $100 in cumulative transfers, an effect that persists for a period of roughly three years (inclusive of the period of program implementation); this effect is meaningfully larger (as much as $4 larger) for cash transfer programs that also include a cash plus livelihoods intervention. There are no significant effects observed on labor force participation. We also present a range of estimates capturing the longer-term (cumulative) effects of cash transfers on consumption under alternate assumptions.

Year published

2024

Authors

Leight, Jessica; Hirvonen, Kalle; Zafar, Sarim

Citation

Leight, Jessica; Hirvonen, Kalle; and Zafar, Sarim. 2024. The effectiveness of cash and cash plus interventions on livelihoods outcomes: Evidence from a systematic review and meta-analysis. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2262. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/148881

Keywords

Cash Transfers; Consumption; Income; Livelihoods

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Project

Fragility, Conflict, and Migration

Record type

Working Paper

Blogs

Do ultra-poor graduation programs build resilience against droughts? Evidence from rural Ethiopia
IFPRI Blog
 | 
March 04, 2024

Do ultra-poor graduation programs build resilience against droughts? Evidence from rural Ethiopia

By Kalle Hirvonen, Daniel Gilligan, Jessica Leight, Heleene Tambet, and Victor Villa

Safety nets can buttress households against climate shocks.

Can phone surveys be used in standard poverty measurement? Evidence from Ethiopia
IFPRI Blog
 | 
June 09, 2023

Can phone surveys be used in standard poverty measurement? Evidence from Ethiopia

By Alan de Brauw, Kalle Hirvonen, Gashaw T. Abate, and Abdulazize Wolle

An experiment suggests survey fatigue can skew results.

A food crisis was brewing even before the Ukraine war – but taking these three steps could help the most vulnerable
IFPRI Blog
 | 
March 25, 2022

A food crisis was brewing even before the Ukraine war – but taking these three steps could help the most vulnerable

By Derek Headey and Kalle Hirvonen

The poor in developing countries face severe impacts.

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Events

Improving Diets and Nutrition through Food Systems: What Will it Take? A Dialogue on IFPRI’s 2024 Global Food Policy Report
Series/Special Event

 | 

November 6, 2024, 1:00 – 5:00 pm

Improving Diets and Nutrition through Food Systems: What Will it Take? A Dialogue on IFPRI’s 2024 Global Food Policy Report

IFPRI’s 2024 Global Food Policy flagship publication arrives at a pivotal moment, as the importance of addressing food systems for better nutrition continues to gain global recognition. With United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) 29th Conference of the Parties taking place in November, the SUN Global Gathering on the horizon and the Nutrition […]

SPIR II Learning Event
IFPRI Program/Country Event

 | 

May 16 to 17, 2023

SPIR II Learning Event

May 16 and 17, 2023 (9:00am – 5:00pm Addis Ababa): The Strengthen PSNP5 Institutions and Resilience (SPIR II) Resilience Food Security Activity (RFSA) in Ethiopia is a five-year project (2021-2026) that supports implementation of the fifth phase of the Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP5) in Amhara and Oromia regions and provides additional graduation model programming through complementary gender-sensitive livelihood, nutrition, and climate resilience activities to strengthen the program and expand its impacts.

Rethinking Food Crisis Responses
Series/Special Event

 | 

May 11, 2023, 5:00 – 8:45 am

Rethinking Food Crisis Responses

Virtual Event: May 11, 2023 – 5:00 AM to 8:45 AM EDT. Please join the Nigeria presentation of the Report and the launch of the FCM Initiative on May 11 in Abuja, Nigeria, in person or virtually.

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News

May 30, 2021 | In the News

Evidence from 22 African countries shows low trust in authorities is affecting vaccine uptake )The Print)

The Print published an op-ed by Senior research fellow Kalle Hirvonen and his co-authors that states while immunization saves millions of lives each year, progress in vaccine coverage remains highly uneven, both between and within countries. Despite considerable progress over the past two decades, the situation is particularly worrying in Africa. Nearly half of the world’s unvaccinated and under-vaccinated children […]

November 13, 2020 | In the News

The height of the Chinese is the highest in East Asia, so who is at the bottom? (The Paper)

The Paper (China) published an article that referenced the IFPRI research on stunting in children, Evaluation of linear growth at higher altitudes (Jama Pediatrics). The study analyzed the height and age data of more than 950,000 children from 59 countries and showed that the growth rate of children living in an ideal family environment is the same as that of […]

September 24, 2020 | In the News

Living in high altitude areas, children are more prone to developmental delays (Sohu.com)) 

Sohu.com published an article on about new research on stunting in higher altitudes. According to Senior Research Fellow Kalle Hirvonen, “More than 800 million people live at altitudes of 1,500 meters or higher, and two-thirds of them live in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. These two regions have most of the stunted children in the world, so understand that altitude […]

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