Food Security

In Nepal, international migration is a highly gendered phenomenon. Compared to global figures, where women make up about half of the world’s migrant population, 90% of Nepalese migrants are men. Many of these men migrate alone to earn wages abroad while their families stay behind. This level of male out-migration in Nepal occurs in a context characterized by widespread food insecurity. This paper examines the effects of male out-migration on household food security, especially on the women who stay behind, in the mountains of Far West Nepal.

 Despite progress in evidence generation, however, there remain critical gaps in our understanding of the mechanisms through which agriculture and other nutrition-sensitive interventions can lead to improvements in diets and nutritional status at the population level.

In this paper, we use data from Northern Ethiopia to study the links between a social protection program and child nutrition. Child malnutrition is one of the many challenges that pose a threat to economic growth in developing countries. It undermines educational attainment, lowers non-cognitive skills, leads to low labor productivity during adulthood, and diverts attention and resources away from other development objectives. Ultimately, under-nutrition during childhood can lead to intergenerational poverty.