Short- and long-run impacts of food price changes on poverty

Maros Ivanic and Will Martin

No 7011, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: Food&Beverage Industry; Rural Poverty Reduction; Regional Economic Development; Emerging Markets (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-08-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-dev
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (30)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSC ... ered/PDF/WPS7011.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Short- and Long-Run Impacts of Food Price Changes on Poverty (2015)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:7011

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank 1818 H Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20433. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Roula I. Yazigi ().