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[学术文献 ] Home environment and nutritional status mitigate the wealth gap in child development: A longitudinal study in Vietnam 进入全文
BMC Public Health
Background: Inequity in child development is found at early age, but limited evidence exists on whether these gaps change over time and what are the mediators. Objective: We aim to (1) quantify wealth related gaps in cognitive and socio-emotional development in early and middle childhood; (2) examine how these gaps were mitigated by maternal, child factors and home environment. Methods: We assessed the offspring of women who participated in a randomized controlled trial of preconception micronutrient supplementation in Vietnam (n = 1599). Child development was measured by the Bayley Scales of Infant Development-III (at 1-2y) and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children®—IV (at 6-7y). We used multivariable regression to estimate the changes in wealth gaps for child development over time, adjusting for potential factors that potentially influence cognitive development. Results: We found significant wealth gaps in cognitive development during early childhood (gaps between top and bottom quintiles: 0.5 SD); these gaps increased substantially in middle childhood (0.9 SD). Wealth disparity in social emotion did not change over time (0.26–0.28 SD). Maternal factors, quality of home environment, and child nutritional status mitigated the wealth gap in cognitive development (7-42%) in early childhood. The contribution of these mitigating factors was smaller in middle childhood (2- 15%). Wealth gap in social emotion reduced by 13% and 43% among children with better nutritional status at 2y and higher quality of home environment at 6-7y, respectively. Conclusion: Interventions focusing on improving quality of home environment, maternal education, wellbeing, and child nutrition status may help reduce developmental deficits associated with poverty.
[学术文献 ] How does the belt and road initiative affect the carbon emissions of China’s cities? 进入全文
Frontiers in Environmental Science
There is growing concern about carbon emissions as the economy grows, which is of great importance to the implementation of the green Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) development strategy. Using panel data of 282 prefecture-level cities in China from 2006–2020 and the difference-in-differences method, this paper empirically examines the effects of the BRI on carbon emissions. Both theoretical and empirical analyses indicate that the BRI can significantly reduce the carbon emission level of cities along the routes, but the impact varies in different regions and cities. The mechanism analysis shows that the BRI reduces the carbon emission level of the Belt and Road cities through the economic agglomeration effect and industrial structure effect. Therefore, China should vigorously promote green Belt and Road construction, implement a regional integration strategy, and promote the transformation and upgrading of the industrial structure. These findings have a certain reference value for the follow-up implementation of the BRI.
[行业报告 ] Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition – Latin America and the Caribbean 2022 进入全文
联合国粮农组织FAO
Regional Overview present the regional food security and nutrition situation, including trends of undernourishment, food insecurity and all forms of malnutrition, together with other indicators that could help the understanding of the causes of hunger and malnutrition. This edition offers a regional overview of the socioeconomic state of the region; national and regional data and trends regarding the costs and affordability of healthy diets; the possible drivers behind the high cost of healthy diets and their unaffordability; and introduces policies and investments around the region that aim to reduce the cost of nutritious foods and improve the affordability of healthy diets.
[前沿资讯 ] Weak Governance in MENA Region Worsens Deepening Land Crisis 进入全文
World Bank
Weak governance exacerbates the deepening land crisis in the Middle East and North Africa region, according to a new World Bank report that urges broad reforms to improve land use and access amid increasing stress from climate change and population growth. Titled "Land Matters: Can Better Governance and Management of Scarcity Prevent a Looming Crisis in the Middle East and North Africa?", the report shows how continuing land deterioration in a region that is 84 percent desert worsens water scarcity issues that threaten food security and economic development. "Now is the time to examine the impact of land issues that loom large in many public policy decisions but aren’t always explicitly acknowledged," said Ferid Belhaj, the World Bank Vice President for the Middle East and North Africa. "Quite simply, land matters. MENA’s growing population and the impact of climate change add urgency to addressing the land crisis." The report uses satellite imagery data to show that cropland in MENA countries decreased by 2.4 percent over the 15-year period from 2003-2018, which was the world’s sharpest drop in a region that already had the lowest cropland per capita and little margin for agricultural expansion. During the same period, the MENA population increased by 35 percent and is estimated to expand by another 40 percent to 650 million people in 2050. Comparing land cover data with statistics on wealth inequality and other indicators, the report shows a correlation between land degradation and poor governance. In addition, state ownership of land is highest in the MENA region, but governments fail to manage land assets in ways that generate public revenues, the report says, while access to land is a severe constraint for 23 percent of firms in the manufacturing and service sectors. Also impeding land access are social norms and laws regarding property that are more unfavorable for women in the MENA region compared to other regions, according to the report. In particular, women in MENA countries come under strong social pressure to renounce their inheritance rights over property, often without fair compensation. "You cannot achieve sustainable economic and social development if people and businesses lack proper access to land," said Harris Selod, a World Bank senior economist and co-author of the report. Reforms proposed by the report include establishing transparent market-driven processes to value and transfer land, as well as developing complete inventories of public land and improving the registration of land rights. These are necessary steps to support more efficient land use and land management decisions and to ensure that land serves social, economic and fiscal functions in a region where property taxes represent less than one percent of GDP. Land policies can also help reduce gender inequalities. A tax on male beneficiaries when women renounce their inheritance rights to property could help reduce the gender gap, with the money collected funding initiatives promoting women’s empowerment, the report says. "Increasing land scarcity leads to strategic trade-offs about the best use of land to meet competing economic, social, and sustainability objectives," said Anna Corsi, a World Bank senior land administration specialist and co-author of the report. "However, the holistic approach needed to address core development issues of land policy is critically lacking in the MENA region." The report notes that land scarcity and governance issues vary throughout the region, with countries requiring approaches that are tailored to their unique challenges. For example, wealthy Gulf Cooperation Council countries face severe land scarcity but have better land administration, while the Maghreb countries as well as Iran, Iraq, and Syria are more seriously challenged by land governance issues with less severe land scarcity. A third group — Djibouti, Egypt, Yemen, and the West Bank and Gaza — faces serious challenges in both governance and scarcity of land. In stressing that "land matters", the report argues that urgently addressing the MENA land crisis now exacerbated by climate change and population growth is essential for the region’s sustainable economic and social development.
[学术文献 ] Farm diversity impacts on food production, income generation and environmental preservation: The Swiss case 进入全文
Journal of Cleaner Production
A sample of 239 farm year observations of Swiss farms was assessed at the product group level for analyzing the relationship between environmental and economic performance and correlations between product groups (Milk, Cattle, Cereal, Beets, and Potatoes). The farms cover the production regions valley, hill and mountains and practice organic production or proof of ecological performance (PEP), the Swiss standard production. The environmental dimension was covered by nine impact categories calculated by the Swiss Agricultural Life Cycle Assessment method (SALCA). The impacts were aggregated using a data envelopment analysis (DEA). The economic dimension is assessed by the family workforce income per product group calculated from a full cost data set from the Swiss farm accountancy data network (FADN). Hereby, all indirect costs, which cannot be directly attributed to the product groups, were allocated using standard costs. We also included productivity as a third dimension in our analysis, quantified as output per area for crop products and output per animal livestock unit for the animal product groups. No trade-offs between the environmental efficiency and the economic performance were identified. On the contrary, for Cattle and Milk we found significant synergies (1.5 times more observations show synergies than no effect or trade-offs). Furthermore we found that productivity correlated positively with environmental efficiency for Milk (coefficient = 0.27), Cattle (coefficient = 0.38) and Cereals (coefficient = 0.30), but only for Cattle (coefficient = 0.17) and Potatoes (coefficient = 0.47) it correlated with economic performance. For all product groups except Cereals, the organic farming system had 5% to 10 higher environmental efficiency and 5%–26% higher economic performance than the PEP farms. Although the differences were not significant, a consistent decrease up to −20% in environmental performance and productivity was observed between the valley/hill and the mountain region. Our results show no indication that farmers maximize their productivity or economic performance at the cost of environmental efficiency. However, the large variability suggests that there is a) room for improvement in several dimension simultaneously, and b) that maximizing productivity does not seem to be a necessity for these improvements.
[学术文献 ] Risk effects of GM corn: Evidence from crop insurance outcomes and high-dimensional methods 进入全文
Agricultural Economics
This study evaluates whether genetically modified (GM) corn hybrids with rootworm resistant traits (GM-RW) have lower yield risk. A crop insurance actuarial performance measure, the loss cost ratio (LCR), is used to represent yield risk. High-dimensional methods are utilized in this study to maintain parsimony in the empirical specification, and facilitate estimation. Specifically, we employ the Cluster-Lasso (cluster-least absolute shrinkage and selection operator) procedure. This method produces uniformly valid inference on the main variable of interest (i.e., the GM-RW variable) in a high-dimensional panel data setting even in the presence of heteroskedastic, non-Gaussian, and clustered error structures. After controlling for a large set of potential weather confounders using Cluster-Lasso, we find consistent evidence that GM corn hybrids with rootworm resistant traits have lower yield risk.
