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Christiaensen, Luc

Jobs Group of the World Bank

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Agriculture, Poverty, Urbanization

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Jobs Group of the World Bank

Last updated January 31, 2023

Biography

Luc Christiaensen is lead agricultural economist in the World Bank’s Jobs Group. He has written extensively on poverty, food security and urbanization in Africa and East Asia. He is an honorary research fellow at the Maastricht School of Management and the Catholic University of Leuven. He was Senior Research Fellow at UNU-WIDER during 2009-2010. He holds a PhD in agricultural economics from Cornell University.

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 70

Consumption Risk, Technology Adoption, and Poverty Traps : Evidence from Ethiopia

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-06) Dercon, Stefan ; Christiaensen, Luc

Much has been written on the determinants of input and technology adoption in agriculture, with issues such as input availability, knowledge and education, risk preferences, profitability, and credit constraints receiving much attention. This paper focuses on a factor that has been less well documented-the differential ability of households to take on risky production technologies for fear of the welfare consequences if shocks result in poor harvests. Building on an explicit model, this is explored in panel data for Ethiopia. Historical rainfall distributions are used to identify the counterfactual consumption risk. Controlling for unobserved household and time-varying village characteristics, it emerges that not just ex-ante credit constraints, but also the possibly low consumption outcomes when harvests fail, discourage the application of fertilizer. The lack of insurance causes inefficiency in production choices.
Gauging the Welfare Effects of Shocks in Rural Tanzania

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-11) Christiaensen, Luc ; Hoffmann, Vivian ; Sarris, Alexander

Studies of risk and its consequences tend to focus on one risk factor, such as a drought or an economic crisis. Yet 2003 household surveys in rural Kilimanjaro and Ruvuma, two cash-crop-growing regions in Tanzania that experienced a precipitous coffee price decline around the turn of the millennium, identified health and drought shocks as well as commodity price declines as major risk factors, suggesting the need for a comprehensive approach to analyzing household vulnerability. In fact, most coffee growers, except the smaller ones in Kilimanjaro, weathered the coffee price declines rather well, at least to the point of not being worse off than non-coffee growers. Conversely, improving health conditions and reducing the effect of droughts emerge as critical to reduce vulnerability. One-third of the rural households in Kilimanjaro experienced a drought or health shocks, resulting in an estimated 8 percent welfare loss on average, after using savings and aid. Rainfall is more reliable in Ruvuma, and drought there did not affect welfare. Surprisingly, neither did health shocks, plausibly because of lower medical expenditures given limited health care provisions.
Toward an Understanding of Household Vulnerability in Rural Kenya

(World Bank, Washington, D.C., 2004-06) Christiaensen, Luc J. ; Subbarao, Kalanidhi

Considerations of risk and vulnerability are key to understanding the dynamics of poverty. This study conceives vulnerability as expected poverty and illustrates a methodology to empirically assess household vulnerability using pseudo panel data derived from repeated cross sections augmented with historical information on shocks. Application of the methodology to data from rural Kenya shows that in 1994 rural households faced on average a 40 percent chance of becoming poor in the future. Households in arid areas that experience large rainfall volatility appear more vulnerable than those in non-arid areas, where malaria emerges as a key risk factor. Idiosyncratic shocks also cause non-negligible consumption volatility. Possession of cattle and sheep/goats appears ineffective in protecting consumption against covariant shocks, though sheep/goat help reduce the effect of idiosyncratic shocks, especially in arid zones. Of the policy instruments simulated, interventions directed at reducing the incidence of malaria, promoting adult literacy, and improving market accessibility hold most promise to reduce vulnerability.
Poverty Reduction during the Rural-Urban Transformation : The Role of the Missing Middle

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-05) Christiaensen, Luc ; Todo, Yasuyuki

As countries develop, they restructure away from agriculture and urbanize. But structural transformation and urbanization patterns differ substantially, with some countries fostering migration out of agriculture into rural off farm activities and secondary towns, and others undergoing rapid agglomeration in mega cities. Using cross-country panel data for developing countries spanning 1980-2004, the analysis in this paper finds that migration out of agriculture into the missing middle (the rural nonfarm economy and secondary towns) yields more inclusive growth patterns and faster poverty reduction than agglomeration in mega cities. This suggests that patterns of urbanization deserve much more attention when striving for faster poverty reduction.
Growth, Distribution, and Poverty in Africa : Messages from the 1990s

(World Bank, Washington, D.C., 2002-03) Christiaensen, Luc ; Demery, Lionel ; Paternostro, Stefano

Christiaensen, Demery, and Paternostro review recent evidence on the trends in household well-being in Africa during the 1990s. They draw on the findings of a series of studies on poverty dynamics that use the better data sets now available. The authors begin by taking a broad view of poverty, tracing changes in both income poverty and in other more direct measures of individual welfare. Experiences have been varied: several countries have seen a sharp decline in poverty, while some have witnessed a marked increase. Yet, in the aggregate, economic growth has been pro-poor. Nonetheless, the aggregate numbers also hide significant and systematic distributional effects which have caused some groups to be left behind. The authors draw four key conclusions: Economic policy reforms (improving macroeconomic balances and liberalizing markets) have been conducive to reducing poverty. Market connectedness is key for the poor to benefit from new opportunities generated by economic growth. Some population groups and regions, by virtue of their sheer remoteness, have been left behind when growth picks up. Education and access to land further condition the extent to which households can benefit from economic opportunities and escape poverty. Finally, rainfall variations and ill health are found to have profound effects on poverty outcomes in Africa underscoring the significance of social protection in a poverty reduction strategy.
Urbanization and Poverty Reduction : The Role of Rural Diversification and Secondary Towns

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-04) Christiaensen, Luc ; De Weerdt, Joachim ; Todo, Yasuyuki

A rather unique panel tracking more than 3,300 individuals from households in rural Kagera, Tanzania during 1991/4-2010 shows that about one in two individuals/households who exited poverty did so by transitioning from agriculture into the rural nonfarm economy or secondary towns. Only one in seven exited poverty by migrating to a large city, although those moving to a city experienced on average faster consumption growth. Further analysis of a much larger cross-country panel of 51 developing countries cannot reject that rural diversification and secondary town development lead to more inclusive growth patterns than metropolitization. Indications are that this follows because more of the poor find their way to the rural nonfarm economy and secondary towns, than to distant cities. The development discourse would benefit from shifting beyond the rural-urban dichotomy and focusing instead more on how best to urbanize and develop the rural nonfarm economy and secondary towns.
Macro and Micro Perspectives of Growth and Poverty in Africa

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2003-09) Christiaensen, Luc ; Demery, Lionel ; Paternostro, Stefano

This article reviews trends in poverty, economic policies, and growth in a sample of African countries during the 1990s, drawing on the better household data now available. Experiences have varied. Some countries have seen sharp drops in income poverty, whereas others have witnessed marked increases. In some countries overall economic growth has been pro-poor and in others not. But the aggregate numbers hide systematic distributional effects. Taking both macro and micro perspectives of growth and poverty in Africa, the article draws four key conclusions. First, economic policy reforms (improving macroeconomic balances and liberalizing markets) appear conducive to reducing poverty. Second, market connectedness is crucial to enable participation in the gains from economic growth. Some regions and households by virtue of their remoteness were left behind when growth picked up. Third, education and access to land emerge as key private endowments to help households benefit from new economic opportunities. Finally, rainfall variations and ill health have profound effects on poverty outcomes, underscoring the significance of social risk management in poverty reduction strategies in Africa.
Post-Harvest Loss in Sub-Saharan Africa : What Do Farmers Say?

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014-04) Kaminski, Jonathan ; Christiaensen, Luc

The 2007-2008 global food crisis has renewed interest in post-harvest loss, but estimates remain scarce, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper uses self-reported measures from nationally representative household surveys in Malawi, Uganda, and Tanzania. Overall, on-farm post-harvest loss adds to 1.4-5.9 percent of the national maize harvest, substantially lower than the Food and Agriculture Organization's post-harvest handling and storage loss estimate for cereals, which is 8 percent. Post-harvest loss is concentrated among less than a fifth of households. It increases with humidity and temperature and declines with better market access, post-primary education, higher seasonal price differences, and possibly improved storage practices. Wider use of nationally representative surveys in studying post-harvest loss is called for.
Child Growth, Shocks, and Food Aid in Rural Ethiopia

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2003-08) Yamano, Takashi ; Alderman, Harold ; Christiaensen, Luc

Over the past decades child stunting in Ethiopia has persisted at alarming rates. While the country experienced several droughts during this period, it also received enormous amounts of food aid, leading some to question the effectiveness of food aid in reducing child malnutrition. Using nationally representative household surveys from 1995-96 and controlling for program placement, Yamano, Alderman, and Christiaensen find that children between 6 and 24 months experienced about 0.9 cm less growth over a six-month period in communities where half the crop area was damaged compared with those without crop damage. Food aid was also found to have a substantial effect on the growth of children in this age group. And on average, the total amount of food aid appeared to be sufficient to protect children against plot damage, an encouraging sign that food aid can act as an effective insurance mechanism, though its cost-effectiveness needs further investigation.
Validating Operational Food Insecurity Indicators Against a Dynamic Benchmark : Evidence from Mali

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2000-11) Christiaensen, Luc J. ; Boisvert, Richard N. ; Hoddinott, John

The authors develop an explicitly forward-looking indicator of food insecurity that takes into account both current dietary inadequacy and vulnerability to dietary inadequacy in the future. Application of this measure to data from northern Mali shows that neglecting the future dimension of food insecurity causes serious underestimation of food insecurity in this area. The authors evaluate the performance, relative to their dynamic bemchmark, of three readily available alternative indicators: an agricultural production index, a dietary diversity index, and a coping strategy index. Despite the uneven performance of these indexes relative to the individual components of the dynamic food insecurity indicator developed in the paper, they all demonstrate strong associations with that indicator. This is a promising result, given the urgent demand for reliable indicators of food insecurity.