Download Free The Short Term Impact Of Higher Food Prices On Poverty In Uganda Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online The Short Term Impact Of Higher Food Prices On Poverty In Uganda and write the review.

In developing countries, all too often policies formulated in response to high food prices are inspired by ideology instead of evidence-based policy research. We look at the immediate effects of these shocks faced by households in Uganda on their poverty and well-being. In addition, we look at the economywide impact in the long run when all markets have settled at a new equilibrium. We find that in the short run, poverty has increased substantially. However, in the longer run, we find welfare levels of rural farm households in particular to rise sharply, primarily as a result of increased returns to farm labor and agricultural land coupled with improved market prices for output sold. These results call for policies that aim to protect the most vulnerable against high food prices and extreme volatility in the short run, without eliminating the incentives of steadily rising commodity prices for longer-run structural agricultural development.
Standard microeconomic methods consistently suggest that, in the short run, higher food prices increase poverty in developing countries. In contrast, macroeconomic models that allow for an agricultural supply response and consequent wage adjustments suggest that the poor ultimately benefit from higher food prices. In this paper we use international data to systematically test the relationship between changes in domestic food prices and changes in poverty. We find robust evidence that in the long run (one to five years) higher food prices reduce poverty and inequality. The magnitudes of these effects vary across specifications and are not precisely estimated, but they are large enough to suggest that the recent increase in global food prices has significantly accelerated the rate of global poverty reduction.
Abstract: In many poor countries, the recent increases in prices of staple foods raise the real incomes of those selling food, many of whom are relatively poor, while hurting net food consumers, many of whom are also relatively poor. The impacts on poverty will certainly be very diverse, but the average impact on poverty depends upon the balance between these two effects, and can only be determined by looking at real-world data. Results using household data for ten observations on nine low-income countries show that the short-run impacts of higher staple food prices on poverty differ considerably by commodity and by country, but, that poverty increases are much more frequent, and larger, than poverty reductions. The recent large increases in food prices appear likely to raise overall poverty in low income countries substantially.
Global food, fuel, and fertilizer prices have risen rapidly in recent months, driven in large part by the fallout from the ongoing war in Ukraine and the sanctions imposed on Russia. Other factors, such as export bans, have also contributed to rising prices. Palm oil and wheat prices increased by 56 and 100 percent in real terms, respectively, between June 2021 and April 2022, with most of the in-crease occurring since February (Figure 1).
This study uses household models based on detailed expenditure and agricultural production data from 31 developing countries to assess the impacts of changes in global food prices on poverty in individual countries and for the world as a whole. The analysis finds that food price increases unrelated to productivity changes in developing countries raise poverty in the short run in all but a few countries with broadly-distributed agricultural resources. This result is primarily because the poor spend large shares of their incomes on food and many poor farmers are net buyers of food. In the longer run, two other important factors come into play: poor workers are likely to benefit from increases in wage rates for unskilled workers from higher food prices, and poor farmers are likely to benefit from higher agricultural profits as they raise their output. As a result, higher food prices appear to lower global poverty in the long run.
After a long secular decline in the 20th century, food prices spiked sharply in 2007-08, 2010-11 and again in 2021-22. While often termed “food crises”, economists disagree on whether rising food prices increase or decrease poverty: poor people have high food expenditure shares but also produce and sell food, and higher food prices trigger food supply responses and growth in rural wages. One limitation of previous econometric studies is their focus on medium-run multi-year impacts, even though simulation analyses typically find negative impacts in the short run. In this study we therefore construct and analyze a novel short run panel of annual poverty and food price data for 33 middle income countries (MICs) over 2000-2019. Using standard panel data techniques, we find that increases in the real price of food predict reductions in $3.20/day poverty in less urbanized countries but increases in poverty in the most urbanized MICs.
Abstract: Policies and external shocks affecting agriculture, the main source of income for rural households, can be expected to have a significant impact on poverty. The authors study the case of Uganda. Throughout the 1990s, more than 90 percent of its poor lived in rural areas and, during the same period, large international price fluctuations as well as an extensive domestic deregulation affected the coffee sector, its main source of export revenues. Using data from three household surveys covering the 1990s, the authors confirm a strong correlation between changes in coffee prices (in a liberalized market) and poverty reduction. This is highlighted by comparing the performance of different households grouped according to their dependence on coffee farming. Regression analysis (based on pooled data from the three surveys) of consumption expenditure on coffee-related variables, other controls, and time-fixed effects corroborates that the mentioned correlation is not spurious. The authors also find that while both poor and rich farmers enter the coffee sector, the price boom benefits the poorer households relatively more, whereas the liberalization seems to create more opportunities for richer farmers. Finally, notwithstanding the importance of the coffee price boom, the agricultural policy framework and the thorough structural reforms in which the coffee market liberalization was embedded have certainly played a role in triggering overall agricultural growth. These factors appear to matter especially in the second half of the 1990s when prices went down but poverty reduction continued.
This book examines the effects of high and volatile food prices during 2007-08 on low-income farmers and consumers in developing, transition, and industrialized countries. Previous studies of this crisis have mostly used models to estimate the likely impacts. This volume includes actual evidence from the field as to how higher prices affected access to food and farm income among poor people. In addition to country and regional case studies, the book presents discussions of cross-cutting themes, including gender, risk management, violence, the importance of subsistence farming as a coping strategy, and the role of governments and markets in addressing higher prices. With 2011 witnessing an unprecedentedly high level of food prices, the findings and policy recommendations presented here should prove useful to both scholars and policy makers in understanding the causes and consequences, as well as the policies needed to ensure food security in light of the skyrocketing cost of food. This book was published as a special double issue of Development in Practice.