Despite increasing agricultural productivity, malnutrition remains high among food producers in many developing countries. This study examines how the difference between agricultural household nutrition requirements and production kept for home consumption, the nutrient deficiency from own production (NDOP), impacts children’s height-for-age z-scores (HAZ) from a unique survey of 528 households in Zambia. The study also investigates the relationship between NDOP and market-bought nutrition and the role of intra-season price changes in nutrition. To address the endogeneity of NDOP, we use a control function (CF) approach and find that NDOP is associated with lower HAZ. Both energy NDOP (calories) and nutrient-specific NDOP, resulting from underproduction relative to nutritional requirements and from selling more than surplus food crops, are negatively correlated with HAZ. This result suggests that higher productivity and market participation do not always lead to better nutrition. We also find that crop sales (commercialisation) only benefit nutrition if the household sells surplus output relative to its nutrition requirements. Finally, we also find that NDOP does not correlate with increased market food purchases, and the seasonal price increases for cereals further dampen these purchases. The findings highlight that policies promoting smallholder commercialisation may overlook detrimental nutritional trade-offs when own-production falls short of household needs. Accounting for post-harvest allocation of nutrients between own-consumption, sales, and purchases can help ensure agricultural interventions improve farmer livelihoods and child nutrition.

We examine the relationship between access to private sanitation facilities at home and psychosocial development among adolescents aged 12-22 in India and Ethiopia. Using a longitudinal two-way fixed effects model, we find that access to private sanitation (flush toilets or pit latrines in the household) is associated with significantly higher self-efficacy and self-esteem for adolescent girls but not boys. Associations are stronger for girls that live in communities with higher overall access to private sanitation, suggesting relative access may matter more for psychosocial development than absolute access. We also find a significant correlation with improved peer relations for girls in early (age 12 to 15) but not late (age 19 to 22) adolescence. We do not find evidence that results are operating through improved physical health, suggesting there may be a direct impact of private sanitation facilities at home and psychosocial development in adolescent girls. Consistent with a direct channel, we also show private sanitation at home mitigates the likelihood of missing school due to menstruation for Indian girls in early adolescence. These findings suggest interventions should consider not only the health benefits of hygienic waste management, but also the potential gains from improved sanitation experiences for women and girls.

This study shows how persistent agricultural shocks in Ethiopia affect education, health and labor outcomes through a time-use study of young people aged 5-22. Leveraging five rounds of the Young Lives Study from 2002-2016, we use dynamic panel instrumental variable regressions to account for the unobserved heterogeneity and serial correlation in the estimation. Agricultural shocks significantly reduce schooling participation and time spent in schooling, deteriorate health, and increase both labor force participation and labor time. Household wealth acts as a buffer and mitigates the adverse effects of shocks on schooling. Interestingly, children from wealthier households have a higher likelihood of joining agricultural labor during shocks, but their intensity of child labor is significantly lower compared to poorer households. 

We study Marx’s concept of exploitation and Piketty’s wealth inequality and ex- amine how finance plays a role. Marx’s concept argues that capitalist systems inherently exploit labor for surplus value, contributing to and perpetuating dis- tributional differences in society. His ideas motivated the critiques of capitalism, motivating debates about class struggles. Piketty’s analysis focuses on wealth in- equality, proposing that capital accumulation outpaces economic growth (r > g), also leading to worse societal wealth differences over time. Piketty’s empirics across countries emphasize the role of inheritance and capital returns in maintaining in- equality. Putting Marx’s and Piketty’s perspectives together, this study adds to ongoing political economy debates on how financial mechanisms and practices influ- ence the dynamics described by Marx and Piketty. This paper examines how finan- cialization alters inequalities by raising capital accumulation and enabling owners of capital to benefit disproportionately from economic gains. By considering the relevance of Marxian concepts in current discussions of wealth distribution and so- cietal stratification while assessing Piketty’s contributions to understanding capital accumulation and inequality in the 21st century, our paper informs policy discus- sions and debates in the field.

This study investigates the factors influencing households' decisions regarding choices of cooking fuel and drinking water sources in rural and small towns of Ethiopia, utilizing data from the Ethiopian Socioeconomic Surveys (ESS) conducted between 2012 and 2016. The study employs probit models (ordered and regular) to examine the effects of improved fuel and water sources on labor outcomes by leveraging variations in access. The findings are that household size, asset ownership, and the education level of the household head as well as their ages, are key determinants influencing the choice of cooking fuel and drinking water. Furthermore, adopting improved water sources significantly and positively impacts family business labor, while using improved cooking fuels significantly enhances agricultural labor. These findings demonstrate the potential benefits of transitioning to improved fuel and water sources in rural Ethiopia, emphasizing the importance of considering social and economic factors in sustainable development initiatives.

There is an increasing emphasis on the importance of allowing people as they grow older to continue to work according to their work capacity and preferences. This paper builds on earlier literature that shows that firms employ older workers, but they tend not to hire them, and provides an explorative analysis of the establishments that employ older workers in Sweden. A special focus is on how sensitive are the findings when the definition of older workers becomes more restrictive. Using rich employer-employee data from Swedish administrative registers, we find that the differences in establishments’ employment are large enough to explain some of the observed differences across definitions. The retirement age in the guaranteed pension scheme, i.e., 65 years, seems to be one of the institutional settings that affect both the employees' and employers’ decision for work after 65, but also the establishment’s size, age, and ownership.