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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

Kate Ambler

Kate Amber is a Senior Research Fellow in the Markets, Trade, and Institutions Unit. Kate’s research broadly focuses on interventions that can increase incomes for smallholders and other microenterprises in agrifood value chains, with a specific focus on the inclusion of women. This includes work on programming in fragile settings, innovations in agricultural finance, and regulatory solutions for food safety. 

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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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The University of Oxford is a world-renowned institution of teaching and research. The Oxford Martin School seeks to addresses global challenges such as climate change, disease and inequality. The Oxford Martin School supports novel, high risk and multidisciplinary projects to garner results to improve the future. The school develops policy recommendations and works with a range of stakeholders to translate them into action.

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Publications

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Journal Article

Vitamin C-rich guava consumed with mungbean dal reduces anemia and increases hemoglobin but not iron stores: A randomized controlled trial of food-to-food fortification in Indian children

2024Rani, Varsha; Moretti, Diego; Khetarpaul, Neelam; Thankachan, Prashanth; Zimmermann, Michael B.; Melse-Boonstra, Alida; Brouwer, Inge D.
Details

Vitamin C-rich guava consumed with mungbean dal reduces anemia and increases hemoglobin but not iron stores: A randomized controlled trial of food-to-food fortification in Indian children

Background Adding vitamin C-rich fruit to staples containing iron could be an effective strategy to improve iron bioavailability and thereby reduce iron-deficiency anemia in children. Objectives We aimed to assess the effect of consuming a mungbean-based meal with or without guava fruit on body iron stores, hemoglobin concentration, and anemia of children as part of a school feeding program. Methods We conducted a 7-mo randomized, controlled trial with 6- to 10-y-old school children (n = 200; 46% anemic, 71% iron-deficient) from a rural community in Haryana, North India. Children were assigned to 2 treatment groups to daily receive either a meal of mungbean dal only (3.0 mg iron; vitamin C:iron molar ratio ∼0.5:1), or mungbean dal with fresh guava (3.2 mg iron; ∼170 mg vitamin C; molar ratio ∼18:1). Meals were served every school day under supervision. The primary outcome was body iron stores, whereas concentrations of hemoglobin and other iron indicators were secondary outcomes. Results Daily consumption of mungbean dal along with guava did not result in an overall improvement of body iron stores [mean treatment effect: 0.65 mg/kg body weight; 95% confidence interval (CI): −0.34, 1.63; P = 0.197]. However, compared with children who consumed mungbean dal only, children in the guava group showed a larger increase in hemoglobin concentration (3.7 g/L; 95% CI: 1.6, 5.6; P = 0.001), and a larger drop in the prevalence of anemia (−51%; 95% CIs: −74, −10; P = 0.022) and iron-deficiency anemia (−56%, 95% CI: −83, 13; P = 0.087). These effects were more pronounced in children who were iron deficient at study start. Conclusions Addition of guava to a mungbean-based meal containing a moderate amount of iron increased hemoglobin and reduced anemia but did not provide enough additional absorbed iron to also increase body iron stores. Food-to-food fortification by inclusion of vitamin C-rich fruits in iron-containing school meals may help alleviate the burden of anemia in children.

Year published

2024

Authors

Rani, Varsha; Moretti, Diego; Khetarpaul, Neelam; Thankachan, Prashanth; Zimmermann, Michael B.; Melse-Boonstra, Alida; Brouwer, Inge D.

Citation

Rani, Varsha; Moretti, Diego; Khetarpaul, Neelam; Thankachan, Prashanth; Zimmermann, Michael B.; Melse-Boonstra, Alida; and Brouwer, Inge D. 2024. Vitamin C-rich guava consumed with mungbean dal reduces anemia and increases hemoglobin but not iron stores: A randomized controlled trial of food-to-food fortification in Indian children. Journal of Nutrition 154(12): 3740-3748. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tjnut.2024.10.042

Country/Region

India

Keywords

Asia; Southern Asia; Ascorbic Acid; Guavas; Anaemia; Health; Haemoglobin; Iron; Randomized Controlled Trials; Food Fortification; Nutrient Improvement; School Feeding; Children

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tjnut.2024.10.042 Source record

Record type

Journal Article

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Working Paper

Does nutrition-sensitive social 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 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

To defer or differ: Experimental evidence on the role of cash transfers on Nigerian couples’ decision-making

2024Bakhtiar, M. Mehrab; Fafchamps, Marcel; Goldstein, Markus; Leonard, Kenneth L.; Papineni, Sreelakshmi
Details

To defer or differ: Experimental evidence on the role of cash transfers on Nigerian couples’ decision-making

We conduct an original lab-in-the-field experiment on the decision–making process of married couples over the allocation of rival and non-rival household goods. The experiment measures individual preferences over allocations and traces the process of deferral, consultation, communication and accommodation by which couples implement these preferences. We find few differences in individual preferences over allocations of goods. However, wives and husbands have strong preferences over process: women prefer to defer decisions to their husbands even when deferral is costly and is not observed by the husband; men rarely defer under any condition. Our study follows a randomized controlled trial that ended a year earlier and gave large cash transfers over eighteen months to half of the women in the study. We estimate the effect of treatment on the demand for agency among women and find that the receipt of cash transfers does not change women’s bargaining process except in a secret condition when the decision to defer is shrouded from her husband. This suggests that the cash transfer to women increases their demand for agency but does not change the intra-household balance of power enough to allow them to express it publicly.

Year published

2024

Authors

Bakhtiar, M. Mehrab; Fafchamps, Marcel; Goldstein, Markus; Leonard, Kenneth L.; Papineni, Sreelakshmi

Citation

Bakhtiar, M. Mehrab; Fafchamps, Marcel; Goldstein, Markus; Leonard, Kenneth L.; and Papineni, Sreelakshmi. 2024. To defer or differ: Experimental evidence on the role of cash transfers on Nigerian couples’ decision-making. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2271. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/152230

Country/Region

Nigeria

Keywords

Africa; Western Africa; Bargaining Power; Cash Transfers; Decision Making; Intrahousehold Relations

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Project

Gender Equality

Record type

Working Paper

Events

Crafting the Next Generation of CGIAR Gender Research
IFPRI Policy Seminar

 | 

October 30, 2019, 12:15 – 1:45 pm

Crafting the Next Generation of CGIAR Gender Research

How can agriculture and natural resource management advance gender equality? Asking this question rather than only its inverse — what does gender analysis bring to agriculture and natural resource management? — elevates the objective of gender equality within CGIAR, challenges boundaries in thinking about gender in agriculture, and stimulates new and creative perspectives. Gender researchers […]

Women's Land: Beyond
IFPRI Program/Country Event

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September 7, 2018, 3:00 – 4:30 pm

Women’s Land: Beyond “Access” to Rights

Discussants Moderator For most rural households, land is the most valuable asset and the foundation for agricultural production. While a large literature exists on the relationships between land tenure security, livelihoods, and poverty, most of this literature is based on household-level data, and we know little about women’s land rights. As a growing body of […]

Blogs

Addressing water governance challenges around Lake Beseka, Ethiopia: A social network approach
IFPRI Blog
 | 
February 28, 2023

Addressing water governance challenges around Lake Beseka, Ethiopia: A social network approach

By Upeksha Hettiarachchi

Examining complex relationships around a key resource.