Land & Food Security

Iron deficiency anemia (IDA) affects more than 3.5 people in the developing world. More than half of pregnant women (56 percent) and 44 percent of nonpregnant women are anemic (ACC/SCN 2000). IDA contributes to approximately 20 percent of maternal deaths in Africa and Asia (Ross and Thomas 1996). In Africa alone, some 20,000 maternal deaths per year could be prevented with anemia treatment.

This study examines the implications of gender differences in wealth transfers—farmland and education—on the lifetime incomes of men and women in the rural areas of Ghana, the Philippines, and Sumatra.

The devolution of natural resource management responsibility from the state to communities or local user groups has become a widespread trend that cuts across countries and resource sectors.

Mexico’s Programa Nacional de Educación, Salud y Alimentación (PROGRESA) is a major government program aimed at developing the human capital of poor households.

This study explores the impact of changes in environmental conditions on household labor allocation to the collection of environmental goods such as fuelwood and leaf fodder for a sample of rural Nepali hill households. Households in rural areas of most developing countries often rely heavily on the surrounding environment for goods such as water, wood, and livestock fodder.

This study explores the impact of changes in land tenure institutions on women’s land rights and the efficiency of tree resource management in western Ghana, where cocoa is the dominant crop.

In rural areas of Bangladesh, poverty is pervasive and associated with high rates of malnutrition, especially among preschool children and women. Apart from low levels of energy intakes, it is increasingly recognized that rice-dominated diets such as those consumed by most poor in the countryside may not supply all micronutrients required for a healthy life and productive activities.

With increasing urbanization, the percentage of women participating in the labor force and the percentage of households headed by single mothers have increased. Reliable and affordable child-care alternatives are thus becoming increasingly important in urban areas.

Before 1994 the policy of apartheid in South Africa had systematically denied the majority of the population access to resources through legal restrictions on mobility, property rights, and residential location (Thompson 1990).

One in every three preschool-aged children living in developing countries is malnourished. This disturbing yet preventable state of affairs causes untold suffering and, given its wide scale, is a major obstacle to the development process itself.