does microfinance change informal lending in village economies evidence from bangladesh this paper examines how availability of microfinance influences households borrowing from informal sources in village economies it uses a unique household level panel data set which spans more than two decades 1987 2008 from rural bangladesh we find that households access to microfinance reduces the incidence of borrowing from informal sources but not the amount of borrowing we find that less poor households benefit more in terms of reducing their reliance on informal borrowing and that the benefit accrues over time we also find that having access to microfinance increases women s informal borrowing for small consumption usage without facilitating access to new business opportunities

banking for the poor evidence from india state led credit and savings programs have been implemented in numerous low income countries but their success in reaching the poor remains widely debated we report on research which exploits the policy features of the indian social banking program to provide evidence on this issue state led branch expansion into rural unbanked locations reduced poverty across indian states in addition the enforcement of directed bank lending requirements was associated with increased bank borrowing among the poor in particular low caste and tribal groups

the impact of microcredit programs on self employment profits do noncredit program aspects matter microcredit programs provide a two tiered approach to poverty alleviation credit for the purchase of capital inputs in order to promote self employment and noncredit services and incentives these noncredit aspects may be an important component of the success of microcredit programs however because they are costly to deliver and their contribution to the success of the programs is difficult to measure they may not be properly valued this paper uses primary data on household participants and nonparticipants in grameen bank and two similar microcredit programs to measure the total and noncredit effects of microcredit program participation on productivity the total effect is measured by estimating a profit equation and the noncredit effect by estimating the profit equation conditional on productive capital productive capital and program participation are treated as endogenous variables in the analysis i find large positive effects of participation and the noncredit aspects of participation on self em

the impact of group lending in northeast thailand abstract much of the literature on group lending focuses on its high repayment rates rather than its goal of promoting borrower welfare most studies that attempt to measure the impact of group lending neglect the issues of self selection and endogenous program placement thus leading to biased estimates of impact one reason for this neglect is the lack of data that would allow for identification of impact this paper surmounts these problems by using data from a quasi experiment conducted in northeast thailand in 1995 1996 program participants were identified in six control villages 1 year prior to receiving loans surveys were then conducted of these control members treatment members in eight older program villages and nonmembers in both types of village this survey design allows for straightforward estimation of impact the results indicate that program loans are having little impact although naive estimates of impact that fail to account for self selection and endogenous program placement significantly overestimate impact

economic development and the division of production between households and markets a model is presented in which scale economies give market production a cost advantage over household production but in which market production is limited by the extent of the market the production process is viewed as a series of stages each further refining and specializing the product of the previous stage as processing proceeds the number of intermediate goods increases and markets thin out firms specialize in the early stages of production and house holds in the later stages as an economy grows production shifts out of households and into the market several other changes associated with economic development are also accounted for

caste and tribe inequality evidence from india 1983 1999 abstract despite policies targeting scheduled castes sc and scheduled tribes st there remain large disparities of living standards between sc st and non sc st households in india the sc st households may be poorer because they possess lower human and physical capital but they may also earn lower returns to these assets this study finds that 30 50 of the welfare disparities are attributable to different returns such structural differences between the sc and the non sc st are partly because the sc earn lower returns to schooling a large part of the structural disparities between the st and the non sc st comes from the fact that the areas where the st live are different from those where the non sc st live in addition the st tend to earn lower returns even with controls for geographical conditions

employment opportunities earnings and the journey to work of minority workers in great britain the cost to minority workers of employer discrimination is generally measured in a competitive framework which focuses upon differences in on the job benefits usually wage rates between racial groups after training and experience are allowed for with other potential costs of employer discrimination given at best more subsidiary attention chiswick i 98 i dex i 984 mcnabb and psacharopoulos i982 mccormick i986 and stewart i983 have recently provided analyses of asian and west indian workers in the united kingdom this paper explores the consequences of employer discrimination if firms cannot discriminate by offering different wages for the same job but may set higher job rejection rates perhaps costlessly because markets do not clear our primary focus is upon comparative journey to work patterns and expenditures for asian and west indian workers in the united kingdom and whether these workers accept jobs at locations that would be unacceptable to whites in order to avoid either a longer spell of unemployment or an inferior occupation with commensurate lower earnings thus within a given residential area minority workers may experience greater commuting expenditures ceteris paribus which are overlooked when comparing earnings or occupational status unlike previous models of search and discrimination in labour markets the focus is placed upon employee response to discrimination rather than the search behaviour of discriminating employers see lippman and mccall i 976 the possibility that the costs of reaching suitable work sites should be incorporated into our understanding of the problems faced by minority workers has been investigated in the united states although in a different context by kain i 964 i 968 i 980 and various other authors including recently ellwood i983 kain considers that the cost of housing market discrimination is understated by focusing upon the relative price of housing for blacks because this overlooks how obstacles to black workers obtaining suburban accommodation concentrates the supply of black labour into comparatively declining inner city areas whereas kain argues that housing market discrimination reduces earnings net of travel costs by creating a spatial mismatch of workers and jobs the concern in this paper is that earnings net of travel costs are reduced because job market discrimination may increase average journey to work distance

poverty decline agricultural wages and non farm employment in rural india 1983 2004 the authors analyze five rounds of national sample survey data covering 1983 1987 8 1993 4 1999 0 and 2004 5 to explore the relationship between rural diversification and poverty poverty in rural india declined at a modest rate during this period the authors provide region level estimates that illustrate considerable geographic heterogeneity in this progress poverty estimates correlate well with region level data on changes in agricultural wage rates agricultural labor remains the preserve of the uneducated and also to a large extent of the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes although agricultural labor grew as a share of total economic activity over the first four rounds it had fallen back to the levels observed at the beginning of the survey period by 2004 this all india trajectory masks widely varying trends across states during this period the rural non farm sector grew modestly mainly between the last two survey rounds regular non farm employment remains largely associated with education levels and social status that are rare among the poor however casual labor and self employment in the non farm sector reveal greater involvement by disadvantaged groups in 2004 than in the preceding rounds the implication for poverty is not immediately clear the poor may be pushed into low return casual non farm activities due to lack of opportunities in the agricultural sector rather than being pulled by high returns offered by the non farm sector econometric estimates reveal that expansion of the non farm sector is associated with falling poverty via two routes a direct impact on poverty that is likely due to a pro poor marginal incidence of non farm employment expansion and an indirect impact attributable to the positive effect of non farm employment growth on agricultural wages the analysis also confirms the important contribution to rural poverty reduction from agricultural productivity availability of land and consumption levels in proximate urban areas

the impact of microcredit on the poor in bangladesh revisiting the evidence abstractwe replicate and reanalyse the most influential study of microcredit impacts m m pitt s r khandker s the impact of group based credit on poor households in bangladesh does the gender of participants matter published in the journal of political economy 106 1998 that study was celebrated for showing that microcredit reduces poverty a much hoped for possibility though one not confirmed by recent randomised controlled trials we show that the original results on poverty reduction disappear after dropping outliers or when using a robust linear estimator using a new program for estimation of mixed process maximum likelihood models we show how assumptions critical for the original analysis such as error normality are contradicted by the data we conclude that questions about impact cannot be answered in these data

countercyclical safety nets for the poor and vulnerable abstract relatively little is known about how government safety net programs insure against low consumption and stabilize asset bases compared to what is known about their role in transferring income the insurance function requires a flexible budget that can be scaled up rapidly to meet unanticipated circumstances safety nets serving an insurance function also differ from other transfer programs in their targeting they need to determine transitory need rather than more chronic correlates of poverty moreover insurance safety nets need a more flexible implementation strategy than do more permanent programs this paper reviews these issues from the perspective of low income countries

detecting and removing discrimination under equal opportunities policies abstract this paper surveys part of the recent voluminous literature on the economics of discrimination focusing on two key questions first how should discrimination be measured and can in fact unambiguous estimates be derived as the basis for detecting where discrimination is present and setting in train measures to eliminate it second to what extent has the implementation of equal opportunities legislation improved the relative standing of women and minority workers in the labour force this section includes a discussion of the likely effects of recent changes in the law such as the equal value amendment in the uk or the introduction of comparable worth in the usa the survey concludes that our ability to detect discrimination at all precisely is still rudimentary and consequently policy measures are likely to be inefficient for this reason

the economics of commuting and the urban labour market the spatial distribution of households and firms or urban spatial structure is a core element of the study of urban economics and the crucial determinant of commuting patterns this paper examines developments in the analysis of urban spatial structure and commuting are related to the urban labour market that is the analysis of labour supply and labour demand in a spatial context these developments have been overlooked in the traditional approach to urban structure and commuting where most attention has been devoted to the markets for land and housing rather than the market for labour yet a little reflection suggests that the labour market might have a great deal to do with the location decisions of households and firms and hence with commuting patterns we argue that much criticism of the economic analysis of urban structure and commuting can be addressed by explicit incorporation of the labour market into the conventional model of urban location this criticism includes findings that the theory cannot explain the tendency for richer households to live farther from the central business district and commute farther to work wheaton 1977 and findings of substantial unexplained or wasteful commuting according to conventional theory hamilton 1982 the paper begins by outlining the basic model of residential location and commuting section 2 we then consider extensions that involve the introduction of labour supply decisions and which determine the value of commuting time section 3 more recent extensions involve the introduction of decentralized workplaces section 4 and logically the issues of job search and migration section 5 we conclude with a summary of the progress in incorporating labour market behaviour into the analysis of urban structure and commuting and our suggestions for further research in this area

an equilibrium search matching model of discrimination abstract a model in which firms have incomplete information about workers at the hiring stage is shown to entail discrimination as the unique stable equilibrium outcome even if no agents have a taste for discrimination and groups are ex ante identical groups which are discriminated against e g blacks women earn lower wages and endure longer unemployment spells

the economic lives of the poor in what turned out to be a rhetorical master move the 1990 world development report from the world bank defined the extremely poor people of the world as those who are currently living on no more than 1 per day per person measured at the 1985 purchasing power parity ppp exchange rate in 1993 the poverty line was updated to 1 08 per person per day at the 1993 ppp exchange rate which is the line we use in this paper poverty lines have always existed indeed 1 per day was chosen in part because of its proximity to the poverty lines used by many poor countries 1 however the 1 a day poverty line has come to dominate the conversations about poverty to a remarkable extent

a theoretical explanation of some stylized facts of economic growth this paper presents a three good two country general equilibrium model that is consistent with several stylized facts of economic growth the three goods are manufactures agriculture and services manufactures are subject to economies of scale the model predicts that services a nontraded good must be more expensive in the country with higher per capita income it also shows that as per capita income increases we should expect the productivity in commodities relative to services to rise the model is able to generate many other stylized facts of economic growth

commutes quits and moves abstract this paper analyzes the effects of commuting distance on quit and move propensities in metropolitan areas with conventional wage and housing price gradients most workers ordinarily move in order to lengthen commutes and quit in order to shorten them however quits and moves by workers whose residential choices are constrained by segregation should be relatively insensitive to commutes descriptive statistics and simultaneous probit estimates of move and quit propensities for white and black employees of a single firm confirm these predictions they demonstrate that long commutes encourage white quits and discourage white moves commute increases of one standard deviation would increase white quit propensities and reduce white move propensities by approximately 10 in contrast commutes by black employees have no significant effects on their quit and move propensities

how has microcredit supported agriculture evidence using panel data from bangladesh improving agricultural productivity has received a greater attention in recent years amid concerns about rising food insecurity population pressures and climate change many believe that better access to institutional credit spanning microcredit as well as commercial and agricultural banks can help rural households smooth risks and access inputs and other technology to modernize agriculture and improve farm nonfarm linkages we use recently augmented household panel data spanning over 20 years in bangladesh to examine the effects of rural credit expansion both microcredit and formal bank channels on outcomes for agricultural households we find that microcredit has benefited households with lower landownings raising agricultural income from activities such as livestock rearing that require less land as well as nonfarm income diversification for all households but with the strongest effect for landless or near landless households we do not find effects of microcredit on crop income but do however find that reported supply side credit constraints significantly lower crop income borrowing by both men and women has contributed to nonfarm income growth for marginal farmers but only men s borrowing has contributed to nonfarm income growth among higher landowning groups

the contributions of the economics of information to twentieth century economics in the e eld of economics perhaps the most important break with the past one that leaves open huge areas for future work lies in the economics of information it is now recognized that information is imperfect obtaining information can be costly there are important asymmetries of information and the extent of information asymmetries is affected by actions of e rms and individuals this recognition deeply affects the understanding of wisdom inherited from the past such as the fundamental welfare theorem and some of the basic characterization of a market economy and provides explanations of economic and social phenomena that otherwise would be hard to understand i introduction the century coming to a close has seen vast changes in economics in both ideas and methodology upon ree ection it is remarkable however how many of the seeds of advances in this century were sowed in the previous i would argue that perhaps the most important break with the past one that leaves open huge areas for future work lies in the economics of information the recognition that information is imperfect that obtaining information can be costly that there are important asymmetries of information and that the extent of information asymmetries is affected by actions of e rms and individuals has had profound implications for the wisdom inherited from the past and has provided explanations of economic and social phenomena that otherwise would be hard to understand in this essay i wish to argue that information economics has had directly and indirectly a profound effect on how we think about economics today eighteenth and nineteenth century antecedents to be sure marshall and other nineteenth century economists talked about problems of imperfect information but with one exception discussions of information were obiter dicta caveats at the end of the analysis they were never at the center

how access to credit affects self employment differences by gender during india s rural banking reform abstract household survey data for 1983 2000 from india s national sample survey organisation are used to examine the impact of credit on self employment among men and women in rural labour households results indicate that credit access encourages women s self employment as own account workers and employers while it discourages men s self employment as unpaid family workers ownership of land a key form of collateral also serves as a strong predictor of self employment among the lower castes in india self employment is less likely for scheduled castes prone to wage activity but more likely for scheduled tribes prone to entrepreneurial work

credit programmes for the poor and seasonality in rural bangladesh this article examines the effect of group based credit used to finance self employment by landless households in bangladesh on the seasonal pattern of household consumption and male and female labour supply this credit can help smooth seasonal consumption by financing new productive activities whose income flows and time demands do not seasonally covary with the income generated by existing agricultural activities the results based upon 1991 92 survey data strongly suggest that an important motivation for credit programme participation is the need to smooth the seasonal pattern of consumption and male labour supply it is only the extent of lean season consumption poverty that selects household into these programmes in addition the largest female and male effects of credit on household consumption are during the lean season

the distribution sector and the development process are there patterns yes roger r betancourt i introduction in this article we bring together three separate strands of literature that have a bearing on the issue of whether or not there are patterns in the role of the distribution sector during the course of economic development the first strand of literature extends the kuznets 1966 tradition by searching for empirical regularities in the evolution of the share of services in gross domestic product gdp during the process of development both chenery and syrquin 1975 176 and syrquin and chenery 1989 21 26 use time series data for a cross section of countries to conclude that the share of services rises during the course of economic development measured by per capita income kravis et al 1983 corroborate this finding for a given year 1975 when per capita gdp expenditures are converted into a common unit using exchange rates but they find the share of services to be constant across per capita income levels when per capita gdp expenditures are converted at purchasing power parity rates panagariya 1 988 develops a general equilibrium three sector model that explains how economies of scale in the industrial sector and constant returns in agriculture and services can generate both of these results because services represent a rather heterogeneous category including telecommunications and domestic service within its fold the question immediately arises as to whether any of the services subcategories exhibit the same or a different pattern as the aggregate category the distribution sector defined as retail plus wholesale trade is a well established subcategory of services that accounts for a substantial portion of gdp in most countries 13 5 is the average share over the 74 countries and time period 1950 1983 in our data set should we expect the share of the distribution sector in gdp to exhibit the same rising pattern with the level of development as the share of services by juxtaposing two strands of recent literature we shall argue that on the contrary one should expect an inverted u pattern instead of a rising pattern for the share of the distribution sector as development proceeds one thread of recent literature focuses on the economic function of the distribution sector in this second subsection of literature betancourt and gautschi 1988 relying on earlier work by bucklin 1973 argue that the economic function of the retail sector is to provide consumers with a set of distribution services or implicit outputs together with the explicit items bought at retail betancourt 1993 adapts the analysis to encompass the wholesale sector a key finding in this literature is the existence of economies of scale with respect to the provision of distribution services ofer 1973 oi 1992 and betancourt and malanoski 1999 this finding contradicts directly one of the basic assumptions on which panagariya 1988 based his explanation of the pattern for services another area of recent literature focuses on development as specialization and stresses the increasing returns associated with specialization ray 1998 chs 4 5 provides an overview of various aspects of this literature romer 1987 is an early contributor to this thread of literature in the context of endogenous growth models locay 1990 stresses that the association of development with specialization leads to an increase in the variety of products available this increasing variety implies higher levels of assortment need to be provided by the distribution sector and it provides the link between the two recent strands of literature that allows us to explain how the inverted u pattern emerges the production of assortment is subject to increasing returns and by embedding this production in a simple economy wide model we generate a share for the distribution sector that increases in the early stages of development but eventually declines the arguments are elaborated in detail in the next section

quits and race previous studies estimate that black quit rates are lower than those of whites this paper suggests that these estimates under state black quit propensities because they neglect racial differences in quit responses to commuting time and local unemployment rates ignoring these differences the black quit effect appears to be negative controlling for them the residual race effect is positive and sufficiently large to account for all net black quits

evaluating seasonal food storage and credit programs in east indonesia abstract predictable annual lean seasons occur in many rural areas including west timor in indonesia imperfections in savings and credit markets make it difficult for staple farmers to convert harvest season output into lean season consumption we conduct a randomized evaluation of a seasonal food storage program and a food credit program by providing improved ways to transfer assets across seasons each program functions as a subsidy on lean season consumption we find that neither program had effects on staple food consumption the storage program increased non food consumption the credit program increased reported income and reduced seasonal gaps in consumption our results are consistent with positive income effects through the expansion of budget sets but suggest that the average household could be close to staple food satiation

returns to capital in microenterprises evidence from a field experiment small and informal firms account for a large share of employment in developing countries the rapid expansion of microfinance services is based on the belief that these firms have productive investment opportunities and can enjoy high returns to capital if given the opportunity however measuring the return to capital is complicated by unobserved factors such as entrepreneurial ability and demand shocks which are likely to be correlated with capital stock the authors use a randomized experiment to overcome this problem and to measure the return to capital for the average microenterprise in their sample regardless of whether they apply for credit they accomplish this by providing cash and equipment grants to small firms in sri lanka and measuring the increase in profits arising from this exogenous positive shock to capital stock after controlling for possible spillover effects the authors find the average real return to capital to be 5 7 percent a month substantially higher than the market interest rate they then examine the heterogeneity of treatment effects to explore whether missing credit markets or missing insurance markets are the most likely cause of the high returns returns are found to vary with entrepreneurial ability and with measures of other sources of cash within the household but not to vary with risk aversion or uncertainty

real wage determination in bangladesh agriculture an econometric investigation thsi paper develops and estimates a real wage model for the agricultural sector in bangladesh for the period 1973 2 1985 4 the model is developed within the framework of the market theory of labour demand and labour supply the empirical results are supportive of the market theory of wages

non linearities in returns to participation in grameen bank programs abstract this paper studies the benefits of participation in micro finance programs where benefits are measured in terms of the ability to smooth the effect of seasonal shocks that cause consumption fluctuations it is shown that although membership in these programs is an effective instrument in combating inter seasonal consumption differences there is a threshold level of length of participation beyond which benefits begin to diminish returns from membership are modelled using an euler equation approach fixed effects non linear least squares estimation of parameters using data from 24 villages of the grameen bank suggests that returns to participation as measured by the ability to smooth seasonal shocks begin to decline after approximately two years of membership this implies that membership alone no longer has a mitigating marginal effect on seasonal shocks to per capita consumption after four years of participation such patterns suggest that the ability to smooth consumption as a function of l

policies and impact an analysis of village level microfinance institutions this paper uses variation in policies and institutional characteristics to evaluate the impacts of village level microfinance institutions in rural thailand to identify impacts we use policies related to the successful unsuccessful provision of services as exogenous variation in effective financial intermediation we find that institutions particularly those with good policies can promote asset growth consumption smoothing and occupational mobility and can decrease moneylender reliance specifically cash lending institutions production credit groups and especially women s groups are successful in providing intermediation and its benefits to members while buffalo banks and rice banks are not the policies identified as important to intermediation and benefits the provision of savings services especially pledged savings accounts emergency services and training and advice surprisingly much publicized policies such as joint liability default consequences or repayment frequency had no measured impacts jel 012 016

disparity in wages but not in returns to capital between rich and poor countries abstract one of the striking features of the international economy is that while the level of average wage rates in rich countries is many times that in pour countries their average rates of return to capital seem to be roughly similar or the differences in them relatively very small this cannot be fully explained away by the fact that capital is internationally much more mobile than labor there is remarkably little movement of return sensitive private capital between the richest and the poorest countries in this paper we assume instead that factors of production are internationally immobile and try to explain the observed asymmetry in the pattern of factor prices in terms of particular types of differences in production functions between rich and poor countries in terms of differential learning effects and differential degrees of specialization in the sector producing intermediate inputs and services

the impact of group based credit programs on poor households in bangladesh does the gender of participants matter this paper estimates the impact of participation by gender in the grameen bank and two other group based micro credit programs in bangladesh on labor supply schooling household expenditure and assets the empirical method uses a quasi experimental survey design to correct for the bias from unobserved individual and village level heterogeneity we find that program credit has a larger effect on the behavior of poor households in bangladesh when women are the program participants for example annual household consumption expenditure increases 18 taka for every 100 additional taka borrowed by women from these credit programs compared with 11 taka for men

the influence of pensions on job mobility in this paper we construct a model of the loss of firm specific capital suffered by employees with occupational pensions who change job the simplest loss function may be represented as the product of job tenure and years to retirement estimates of logit equations for individual job search in great britain suggest that the effect of pension status can be satisfactorily captured by this simple loss function these equations and others for job turnover indicate that membership of an occupational pension scheme substantially reduces job mobility

seasonality of income and poverty in bangladesh abstract seasonal food deprivation in bangladesh locally known as monga sometimes rises to the level of famine during the pre harvest period of aman rice an analysis of household income and expenditure survey data shows that income and consumption are lower during monga than in other seasons and that seasonal income greatly influences seasonal consumption econometric estimates reject the hypothesis of perfect consumption smoothing in the northwestern region of greater rangpur rural households suffer disproportionately from monga seasonal differences in poverty across regions are due mainly to differences in household specific seasonality of income and consumption income diversification explains the lower incidence of income seasonality observed in non rangpur regions to contain seasonal hunger in greater rangpur public policies should promote rural income diversification together with seasonal migration a flexible microfinance scheme that provides both production and consumption loans on flexible repayment terms could help diversify income and reduce seasonality of income and poverty

microenterprise lending to female entrepreneurs sacrificing economic growth for poverty alleviation abstract this research compares the performance of female and male entrepreneurs in a microenterprise credit program in guatemala previous research and field practice has suggested that targeting credit at female borrowers allows for greater increases in household welfare but that male entrepreneurs may more aggressively expand enterprises when given access to credit in this paper we develop a model that shows that increases in value of home time during childbearing years for women may substantially account for gender differences in responses to credit access empirical results from guatemalan survey data yield estimations consistent with the predictions from our model

do rural banks matter evidence from the indian social banking experiment lack of access to finance is often cited as a key reason why poor people remain poor this paper uses data on the indian rural branch expansion program to provide empirial evidence on this issue between 1977 and 1990 the indian central bank mandated that a commercial bank can open a branch in a location with one or more bank branches only if it opens four in locations with no bank branches we show that between 1977 and 1990 this rule caused banks to open relatively more rural branches in indian states with lower initial financial development the reverse is true outside this period we exploit this fact to identify the impact of opening a rural bank on poverty and output our estimates suggest that the indian rural branch expansion program significantly lowered rural poverty and increased non agricultural output

health shocks and consumption smoothing in rural households does microcredit have a role to play abstract this paper estimates using a large panel data set from rural bangladesh the effects of health shocks on household consumption and how access to microcredit affects households response to such shocks households appear to be fairly well insured against health shocks our results suggest that households sell livestock in response to health shocks and short term insurance is therefore attained at a significant long term cost however microcredit has a significant mitigating effect households that have access to microcredit do not need to sell livestock in order to insure consumption microcredit organizations and microcredit therefore have an insurance role to play an aspect that has not been analyzed previously

an exogeneity test for a simultaneous equation tobit model with an application to labor supply a test of weak exogeneity in the simultaneous equation tobit model is proposed and illustrated using a female labour supply model estimated using cross section data the test statistic can be simply output from any standard tobit maximum likelihood package and is asymptotically efficient the procedure provides consistent estimators for the simultaneous tobit model whose asymptotic covariance matrix is a simple extension of the usual tobit formula we also provide the lagrange multiplier test of weak exogeneity this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

seasonal hunger and its mitigation in north west bangladesh seasonal hunger may result from seasonality of agriculture when households fail to smooth income and consumption using household survey data from the northwest region of bangladesh this paper examines alternative measures of seasonal hunger and provides some evidence to support policies and programs needed to mitigate seasonal hunger the results suggest that a large majority of food vulnerable households are the perpetual poor as opposed to a small percentage of households who are subject to food deprivation only during the lean period findings suggest that government safety net programs and microcredit provide a cushion for the poor to stave off seasonal hunger