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Diets are changing globally, as agricultural and food systems have become globalised. Understanding how patterns of globalisation affect welfare is a key development question, but we know little about the way that the globalisation of food systems impacts different groups. This study explores food security and consumption among schoolchildren in Accra. We use a novel approach based on triangulation of primary data on food consumption and a synthesis of secondary literature on food trade, policy and urban food environment. Thus, we bridge a divide between micro-level analyses of food consumption and macro-level studies of food systems. We find that socio-economic status is a critical dimension, with poorer children more vulnerable to food insecurity and narrow dietary diversity. However, the consumption of packaged and processed foods, often sugar-rich and nutrient-poor, cuts across wealth groups. We argue that the urban food question today is defined by two intersecting phenomena: inequality and dietary change. The urban poor continue to face the fundamental challenge of adequate food access amidst a food environment that provides consumers with unhealthy and cheap food options. Therefore, food policy needs to regulate imports of cheap, unhealthy and enticing food. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a resurgence of interest in time-use research driven, inter alia, by the desire to understand if development interventions, especially when targeted to women, lead to time constraints by increasing work burdens. This has become a primary concern in agriculture-nutrition research. But are time-use data useful to explore agriculture-nutrition pathways? This study develops a conceptual framework of the micro-level linkages between agriculture, gendered time use, and nutrition and analyzes how time use has been conceptualized, operationalized, and interpreted in agriculture-nutrition literature on low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The paper argues that better metrics, but also conceptualizations and analytics of time use, are needed to understand gendered trade-offs in agriculture-nutrition pathways. In particular, the potential unintended consequences can be grasped only if the analysis of time use shifts from being descriptive to a more theoretical and analytical understanding of time constraints, their trade-offs, and resulting changes in activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on four years of fieldwork in Ethiopia and Uganda, this paper addresses gaps in knowledge about the mechanisms linking agricultural exports with poverty reduction, the functioning of rural labour markets, and the relevance to the lives of the poorest people of Fairtrade. Statistical analysis of survey evidence, complemented by qualitative research, highlights the relatively poor payment and non-pay working conditions of those employed in research sites dominated by Fairtrade producer organisations. We conclude that Fairtrade is not an effective way to improve the welfare of the poorest rural people. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Measurement is increasingly at the centre of debates in African economic development. Some remarkable upward revisions of GDP, which are signs of statistical systems improving, caused the declaration of a statistical tragedy in Africa. This special issue evaluates the database for African economic development with articles on the quality of the data on GDP, health and education, poverty, labour, agriculture and income distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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The World Bank and UNDP have proposed that migration and mobility facilitate economic development. Yet the epidemiological and public health literature has often associated migration and population mobility with the extension and intensification of infectious diseases, most recently epitomised by the AIDS pandemic. Within the context of the well-documented negative developmental impact of AIDS, this suggests a potential clash in perspectives on the role of migration. However, if insights from public health can be incorporated into broader development perspectives, it may be possible to realise the developmental benefits of migration while mitigating or avoiding any associated health concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Economists struggle to understand the macroeconomic impact of HIV/AIDS. To this end, they have constructed macro models that utilize simplified pictures of the working of the economy and then factor in channels by which HIV/AIDS will have an effect. These models have considerable influence on HIV/AIDS policy; however, they do have their critics. Criticisms in the literature have focused on the simplifications in the construction of the economy that seem most misleading. Using micro studies of sub-Saharan Africa as examples, this contribution argues that there are other important simplifications used by models that need to be reconsidered. Rather than a series of unconnected errors in the modeling process, the approaches show pervasive gender bias, which means that many of the impacts of greater female mortality and morbidity in sub-Saharan Africa are ignored. Gender-aware modeling is crucial to improving assessment of the aggregate impact of the pandemic both in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a vigorous debate about poverty measurement in Russia, where both the poverty line and poverty data have been subject to criticism. We outline some of the issues raised and discuss the use of an alternative welfare measure based on household assets. Asset indices have mostly been constructed for low-income countries, supported by two arguments: first, the asset index appears to have a number of empirical advantages in terms of data collection; and second, it may be better at capturing long-term welfare than either income or expenditure data. We show that the asset index approach is useful in Russia, and may present policy-makers with a superior means of determining household welfare. However, our discussion raises a number of methodological issues that must be confronted by those constructing asset indices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a discussion of agricultural policy within the nexus of external influence, domestic social relations, and macro-economic forces in Lesotho in Africa. Socio-economic changes from 1970 to early 1990s; Evidence of growing poverty and rural differentiation; Impact of the agricultural policy on the poor.

This article presents the results of a prevalence survey carried out in 1994 to assess the socio‐economic significance of waged farmwork in parts of the Eastern Transvaal (now Mpumalanga). The survey was designed to shed light on the question of how many rural households depend for their survival on the availability of wage employment opportunities for women on farms. The results support the view that economists and statisticians in South Africa have paid insufficient attention to the importance of unrecorded, or statistically ‘invisible’ agricultural wage employment to the rural population. In particular, the importance of women's work as waged farm labourers has not received the attention it deserves for policy purposes. Women's wages and working conditions on all types of farms are probably the critical determinants of the standard of living of many tens of thowsands of households in Mhala and Mapulaneng, and of many millions of the poorest households in South Africa as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]