We identify the impact of emergency food aid programs after the 2002 drought in rural Ethiopia on future welfare. Based on a difference-in-differences matching estimator, participation in food-for-work increases growth in total consumption and food consumption eighteen months after the drought. Separately, receiving free food raises growth in food consumption, but, surprisingly, negatively impacts food security. Food-for-work benefited households in the middle and upper tail of the consumption distribution, while the better-targeted free food program benefited the poorest. Evidence suggests these impacts demonstrate accumulated and persistent effects of food aid received in the first twelve months after the drought.

"This book, which examines Ethiopia's food security strategy and the safety net program from different approaches and perspectives in the context of the development of a social protection policy, is a continuation of that tradition ... Ethiopia's safety net program is one of the largest and most influential social protection schemes in Africa and, as noted by several authors in this volume, provides important lessons beyond the Ethiopian context."--Back cover.

This dissertation consists of two separate essays. The first essay examines if the allocation of emergency food aid during the 2002/3 Ethiopian drought adheres to household rankings based on their history of consumption poverty as well as their experiences with shocks and food insecurity. We found that the allocation of free food aid benefits favored consumption-poor households with older heads. In contrast, the public works program did not favor consumption-poor households because of its work requirement. We also found the allocation of benefits in both programs to be marred by inclusion and exclusion errors. Non-deserving households that received free food aid were more likely to be headed by elderly women while those who wrongly received public works benefits were more likely to be younger and had better connections. Aid deserving households with older and/or sickly heads enjoyed lower chance of being excluded from either program. ☐ The second essay examines the effect of emergency food aid interventions during the 2002/3 Ethiopian drought on household wellbeing. We use the exogenous variation that the selection criteria provide to estimate the effect of program participation using fuzzy regression discontinuity. Results from the first stage of the RD design show that households that the criteria-based ranking deemed eligible to receive benefits had significantly higher chance of actually receiving them than those it almost deemed eligible. Despite the allocation of benefits being progressive, results from the second stage of the RD estimation indicate that neither program was effective at preventing beneficiaries from depleting assets or growing their livestock units. However, participation in the free food aid program had a positive and significant effect on real per capita food consumption. But, this estimate loses significance when households who also received public works benefits are excluded from the analysis, suggesting that the effect on consumption may be short lived. In contrast, participation in public works employment had a significant but negative effect on the rate of growth of non-food consumption. While participation in either program had no effect on household assessments of program fairness post-intervention, recipients of either benefit were more likely to view the government or its officials favorably than their non-recipient counterparts. We explain this in terms of the relief and optimism associated with securing help during a crisis situation.

Food insecurity at the national and household level not only is a consequence of conflict but can also cause and drive conflicts. This paper makes the case for an even higher priority for food security–related policies and programs in conflict-prone countries. Such policies and programs have the potential to build resilience to conflict by not only helping countries and people cope with and recover from conflict, but also contributing to preventing conflicts and supporting economic development more broadly—that is, helping countries and people become even better off. Based on this definition and a new conceptual framework, the paper offers several insights from four case studies on Egypt, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. First, conflicts are often related to other shocks such as economic crises, price shocks, and natural disasters. Second, increasing subsidies is a favored policy measure in times of crisis; however, such measures do not qualify as resilience building. Third, climate change adaptation should be an integral part of conflict prevention in part because climate change is expected to significantly increase the likelihood of conflict in the future. Fourth, building price information systems, introducing and expanding credit and insurance markets, geographic targeting of social safety nets, and building functioning and effective institutions are key measures for building resilience to conflict. Finally, the paper points to several important knowledge gaps.

Whereas there is plenty of work looking at macroeconomic effect of public spending on growth and poverty in Africa as well as studies of the impact of spending or investment in one economic sector on outcomes in that sector or on broader welfare measures, this book fills a much needed gap in the research looking how the composition of public spending affects key development outcomes in the region. The book brings together recent analysis on the trends in, and returns to, public spending for agricultural growth and rural development in Africa. Case studies of selected African countries provide insights on the contributions of different types of public expenditures for poverty, growth and welfare outcomes, as well as insights into the constraints in gaining development mileage from investments in the agricultural sector.