The impact of food inflation on urban poverty and its monetary cost : some back-of-the-envelope calculations

By Sebastien C. Dessus, Santiago Herrera, Rafael E. De Hoyos Navarro. 2008

176 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper uses a sample of 73 developing countries to estimate the change in the cost of alleviating urban poverty brought about by the recent increase in food prices. This cost is approximated by the change in the poverty deficit, that is, the variation in financial resources required to eliminate poverty under perfect targeting. The results show that, for most countries, the cost represents less than 0.1 percent of gross domestic product. However, in the most severely affected, it may exceed 3 percent. In all countries, the change in the poverty deficit is mostly due to the negative real income effect of those households that were poor before the price shock, while the cost attributable to new households falling into poverty is negligible. Thus, in countries where transfer mechanisms with effective targeting already exist, the most cost-effective strategy would be to scale up such programs rather than designing tools to identify the new poor.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Sociology and Political Science, Soil Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/43a90ecba45629cbeff50a8794bba7a04b20f942

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Economics and Econometrics

1. Derek Headey
2. A. Quisumbing
3. Neha Kumar
4. H. Zaman
5. A. Zezza
6. K. Covarrubias
7. Q. Wodon
8. B. Davis

In Sociology and Political Science

1. Neha Kumar
2. A. Zezza
3. H. Zaman
4. Q. Wodon
5. Derek Headey
6. B. Davis
7. Rafael E. De Hoyos
8. D. Medvedev

In Soil Science

1. A. Quisumbing
2. A. Zezza
3. K. Covarrubias
4. H. Zaman
5. Neha Kumar
6. Q. Wodon
7. Derek Headey
8. B. Davis

Citations in the corpus

• Rising Food Prices in Sub-Saharan Africa: Poverty Impact and Policy Responses (2008, background): “A recent paper shows that 88% of the increase in urban poverty depth due to the global increase in food prices is from poor households becoming poorer and only 12% from households falling into poverty (Dessus et al., 2008).”
• Poverty Effects of Higher Food Prices: A Global Perspective (2009, background): “Using the change in the “poverty deficit” (financial resources required to eliminate poverty under perfect targeting) as the cost measurement, Dessus et al. (2008) showed that, on average, 90% of the additional cost of alleviating urban poverty can be attributable to the reduction of real income of…”
• Urban agriculture in the developing world: a review (2013, background): “This makes them highly vulnerable to food price hikes (Zezza et al. 2008; Dessus et al. 2008).”
• The Impact of the Global Food Crisis on Self-Assessed Food Security (2013, methodology): “Dessus et al. (2008) adopt the net benefit ratio approach, but only for urban areas.”
• Urban agriculture, poverty, and food security: empirical evidence from a sample of developing countries. (2010, background): “Poor urban dwellers, being largely net food buyers and depending mostly on markets for their food supplies, are particularly vulnerable to adverse food price shocks, and are consistently the group in society that suffers most from higher food prices (Zezza et al., 2008; Dessus et al., 2008).”
• Gendered impacts of the 2007–2008 food price crisis: Evidence using panel data from rural Ethiopia (2013, background): “2008 ; Dessus , Herrera , and de Hoyos 2008 ) , and reduction in per capita expenditure ( Zezza et al .”
• The impact of rising food prices on the poor (2008, background): “…importance, the transmission of prices to domestic markets, and the prospects for future price trends, a number of contributions have emerged that look at the microeconomic impact of the crisis (Ivanic and Martin, 2008; Aksoy and Isik-Dikmelik, 2008; Dessus et al., 2008; and Rios et al., 2008a).”