Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion

Assessing the overall benefits of programs enhancing human capital and equity: A new method with an application to school meals

Evolution of intimate partner violence impacts from cash transfers, food transfers, and behaviour change communication: Mixed-method experimental evidence from a nine-year post-programme follow-up in Bangladesh

Cash or food transfers can reduce intimate partner violence (IPV), but knowledge gaps remain on how impacts evolve over time, and the role of complementary ‘plus’ activities and contextual factors. We conducted a mixed-method analysis of how the Transfer Modality Research Initiative in Bangladesh affected IPV over time. The programme was implemented from 2012 to 2014, following a randomised controlled trial (RCT) design, across Northern and Southern Bangladesh. Intervention arms included monthly cash or food transfers, with or without complementary nutrition behaviour change communication (BCC). We estimate post-programme impacts on IPV using quantitative data collected in 2014–2015, 2018, and 2022, and combine this with qualitative data collected in 2023 to explore how and why IPV impacts evolved over time and the role of contextual factors. In the North, combining cash with BCC led to sustained IPV reductions in each post-programme round, while cash alone reduced IPV in 2022 but not the previous two rounds; food transfers showed no post-programme impacts. In the South, combining food with BCC led to post-programme IPV reductions in 2014–2015; no intervention sustained IPV reductions thereafter. Sustained IPV reductions are primarily driven by improved household economic security and emotional well-being. Other pathways – family relationships (including in-laws’ roles), women’s empowerment, and social and community support – contributed to changing couples’ relationships during the programme but became less salient after the programme ended. Contextual factors, including demographic changes, climate-related changes, external projects and norms condoning IPV appear to influence the sustainability of impacts. Results suggest that ‘plus’ programming was key to sustaining IPV impacts soon after the interventions, but less so by nine years post-programme, as economic security increasingly drove impacts. More mixed method research is needed from the outset to unpack if and how pathways to IPV reduction can be sustained in different contexts over time.

Guilty pleasures: Expenditure elasticities of ultra-processed foods and paid meals in India

Armed actors, including militaries and paramilitaries, are heavily entrenched in the agrifood systems of several low- and middle-income countries, often resulting in negative implications for both agricultural transformation and democratic transitions. However, the role of armed actors is overlooked in the scholarship on the governance of agricultural value chains. To address this gap, this paper focuses on the role of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan’s agrifood system. Through over 50 semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders, the paper traces how the SAF and RSF initially gained their foothold in the agrifood system and how they interact with each other, and the private sector across diverse value chains. We argue that these actors decide to pursue investments in certain value chains depending on the extent to which the private sector is already involved and the degree of technical complexity required to attain more profitable product upgrading. Based on these considerations, we uncover four strategies used by SAF and RSF in different value chains: exclusive capture and rent-extraction, competition through biased licensing and quota allocations, acquiescence to existing private competitors when value-addition is too complex, and innovation when potential is high and the private sector is absent. We show how these strategies manifest across value chains as diverse as livestock, wheat, gum Arabic, and horticulture, with secondary applications to other commodities. Given that economic competition between SAF and RSF was a major factor in the outbreak of the 2023 armed conflict, identifying how these strategies emerged and manifested not only contributes to the literature on business-state relations but also expands insights about the political economy antecedents of large-scale conflict.