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Who we are

With research staff from more than 60 countries, and offices across the globe, IFPRI provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries.

researcher spotlight

Ruth Meinzen-Dick

Ruth Meinzen-Dick is a Senior Research Fellow in the Natural Resources and Resilience Unit. She has extensive transdisciplinary research experience in using qualitative and quantitative research methods. Her work focuses on two broad (and sometimes interrelated) areas: how institutions affect how people manage natural resources, and the role of gender in development processes. 

Where we work

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Where we work

IFPRI currently has more than 600 employees working in over 80 countries with a wide range of local, national, and international partners.

IFPRI Regional Programs

IFPRI Country Programs

Research by country and region

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partnerships

The World Bank’s main focus is to decrease poverty and to promote shared prosperity by fostering income growth of the bottom 40% for every country. The World Bank works in every major area of development, helping to end poverty and boost prosperity for the poorest people, and create sustainable economic growth. The World Bank Group is a leading financier of agriculture, with $2.9 billion in new commitments in 2016.

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Projects

Integrated Agricultural Growth Project in the Great Lakes

Integrated Agricultural Growth Project in the Great Lakes

The Integrated Project on Agricultural Growth in the Great Lakes region (PICAGL) aims to increase agricultural productivity and marketing of four value chains (cassava, rice,……

Transfer Modality Research Initiative (TMRI)

Transfer Modality Research Initiative (TMRI)

From 2012 to 2014, IFPRI partnered with the World Food Programme on a two-year pilot safety net program – the Transfer Modality Research Initiative (TMRI)……

Integrated Food Policy and Research Program (IFPRP)

Integrated Food Policy and Research Program (IFPRP)

…

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Publications

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Journal Article

Experimental measures of intra-household resource control

2024Ambler, Kate; Jones, Kelly; Recalde, María P.
Details

Experimental measures of intra-household resource control

We study experimental measures of preferences for intra-household resource control among 3387 couples in Ghana and Uganda. We implement two incentivized tasks: (1) a game that measures willingness to pay for resource control in the household, and (2) dictator games played privately and jointly by spouses. Across study sites we find that women exhibit a higher willingness to pay for resource control than their husbands and have less influence over joint dictator game decisions. Importantly, behavior in the two tasks is correlated, suggesting that they capture similar underlying latent variables. In Uganda, experimental measures from both tasks are also robustly correlated with a range of survey measures of women’s access to resources, agency, and wellbeing. This is not the case in Ghana, suggesting that contextual factors may be important, and researchers may want to collect both measures in a project. Like other recent papers, we find that an important fraction of respondents display negative willingness to pay for intra-household resource control. Our analysis shows that such behavior is displayed by women who have higher levels of economic empowerment and wellbeing, a result that contradicts previous conjectures made in the literature. Altogether, our analysis suggests that, despite lacking ideal theoretical properties, private dictator game decisions (even when collected only from the wife) can perform well as proxies of empowerment. JEL Codes: C9, D13, J12, J16

Year published

2024

Authors

Ambler, Kate; Jones, Kelly; Recalde, María P.

Citation

Ambler, Kate; Jones, Kelly; and Recalde, María P. 2024. Experimental measures of intra-household resource control. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 227(November 2024): 106705. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2024.106705

Country/Region

Ghana; Uganda

Keywords

Africa; Eastern Africa; Western Africa; Bargaining Power; Decision Making; Households; Women’s Empowerment; Gender; Women

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2024.106705 Source record

Project

Policies, Institutions, and Markets

Record type

Journal Article

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Working Paper

Does nutrition-sensitive social protection protection build longer-term resilience? Experimental evidence from Bangladesh

2024Ahmed, Akhter U.; Bakhtiar, M. Mehrab; Hoddinott, John; Roy, Shalini
Details

Does nutrition-sensitive social protection protection build longer-term resilience? Experimental evidence from Bangladesh

Evidence shows that cash and in-kind transfer programs increase food security while interventions are ongoing, including during or immediately after shocks. But less is known about whether receipt of these programs can have protective effects for household food security against shocks that occur several years after interventions end. We study the effects of a transfer program implemented as a cluster-randomized control trial in rural Bangladesh from 2012-2014 – the Transfer Modality Research Initiative (TMRI) – on food security in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. We assess TMRI’s impacts at three post-program time points: before the shock (2018), amidst the shock (2021), and after the immediate effects of the shock (2022). We find that TMRI showed protective effects on household food security during and after the pandemic, but program design features “mattered”; positive impacts were only seen in the treatment arm that combined cash transfers with nutrition behavior change communication (Cash+BCC). Other treatment arms – cash only, and food only – showed no significant sustained effects on our household food security measures after the intervention ended, nor did they show protective effects during the pandemic. A plausible mechanism is that investments made by Cash+BCC households in productive assets – specifically livestock – increased their pre-shock resilience capacity.

Year published

2024

Authors

Ahmed, Akhter U.; Bakhtiar, M. Mehrab; Hoddinott, John; Roy, Shalini

Citation

Ahmed, Akhter U.; Bakhtiar, M. Mehrab; Hoddinott, John; and Roy, Shalini. 2024. Does nutrition-sensitive social protection protection build longer-term resilience? Experimental evidence from Bangladesh. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2282. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/155053

Country/Region

Bangladesh

Keywords

Asia; Southern Asia; Covid-19; Resilience; Shock; Social Protection

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Project

Gender Equality

Record type

Working Paper

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Working Paper

To defer or differ: Experimental evidence on the role of cash transfers on Nigerian couples’ decision-making

2024Bakhtiar, M. Mehrab; Fafchamps, Marcel; Goldstein, Markus; Leonard, Kenneth L.; Papineni, Sreelakshmi
Details

To defer or differ: Experimental evidence on the role of cash transfers on Nigerian couples’ decision-making

We conduct an original lab-in-the-field experiment on the decision–making process of married couples over the allocation of rival and non-rival household goods. The experiment measures individual preferences over allocations and traces the process of deferral, consultation, communication and accommodation by which couples implement these preferences. We find few differences in individual preferences over allocations of goods. However, wives and husbands have strong preferences over process: women prefer to defer decisions to their husbands even when deferral is costly and is not observed by the husband; men rarely defer under any condition. Our study follows a randomized controlled trial that ended a year earlier and gave large cash transfers over eighteen months to half of the women in the study. We estimate the effect of treatment on the demand for agency among women and find that the receipt of cash transfers does not change women’s bargaining process except in a secret condition when the decision to defer is shrouded from her husband. This suggests that the cash transfer to women increases their demand for agency but does not change the intra-household balance of power enough to allow them to express it publicly.

Year published

2024

Authors

Bakhtiar, M. Mehrab; Fafchamps, Marcel; Goldstein, Markus; Leonard, Kenneth L.; Papineni, Sreelakshmi

Citation

Bakhtiar, M. Mehrab; Fafchamps, Marcel; Goldstein, Markus; Leonard, Kenneth L.; and Papineni, Sreelakshmi. 2024. To defer or differ: Experimental evidence on the role of cash transfers on Nigerian couples’ decision-making. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2271. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/152230

Country/Region

Nigeria

Keywords

Africa; Western Africa; Bargaining Power; Cash Transfers; Decision Making; Intrahousehold Relations

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Project

Gender Equality

Record type

Working Paper

Events

Are healthy diets affordable? Using new data on retail prices and diet costs to guide agricultural and food policy
IFPRI Policy Seminar

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July 15, 2022, 10:00 – 11:30 am

Are healthy diets affordable? Using new data on retail prices and diet costs to guide agricultural and food policy

Virtual Event: July 15, 2022 – 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM EDT. This Policy Seminar will feature Food Prices for Nutrition project leaders and participants around the world, who will discuss how policy analysts and researchers can use the new methods and data in their own work.

Can agricultural policies deliver better value for money for people, the planet, and the economy?
IFPRI Policy Seminar

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February 2, 2022, 9:30 – 11:00 am

Can agricultural policies deliver better value for money for people, the planet, and the economy?

Virtual Event: Feb 02, 2022 – 09:30 AM to 11:00 AM EST. This policy seminar will present a summary of the latest IFPRI-World Bank research findings and feature speakers discussing the need for more rapid adoption of technological solutions that foster less emissions-intensive productivity growth across developed and developing countries alike.

Transforming Food Systems after COVID-19: Implications of the 2021 Global Food Policy Report for Eurasia
Series/Special Event

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May 27, 2021, 7:30 – 9:00 am

Transforming Food Systems after COVID-19: Implications of the 2021 Global Food Policy Report for Eurasia

Virtual Event: MAY 27,2021 – 07:30 AM TO 9:00 AM EDT. The impact of COVID-19 on transforming food systems in the Eurasia Region.

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Blogs

Trade policy and food price volatility: Beggar thy neighbor or beggar thyself?
IFPRI Blog
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June 07, 2024

Trade policy and food price volatility: Beggar thy neighbor or beggar thyself?

By Will Martin, Abdullah Mamun, Nick Minot, and Rob Vos

The downsides of emergency trade measures.

The long-run effect of public works employment: Evidence from Tunisia
IFPRI Blog
 | 
May 25, 2023

The long-run effect of public works employment: Evidence from Tunisia

By Jessica Leight and Eric Mvukiyehe

Evaluating the impacts of workfare.

Policy seminars: As global food prices rise, important new data addresses the affordability of healthy diets
IFPRI Blog
 | 
July 25, 2022

Policy seminars: As global food prices rise, important new data addresses the affordability of healthy diets

By Drew Sample

The Food Prices for Nutrition project provides new food security indicators.

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