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It seems that the current conflict in Syria is finishing, and a new phase of rebuilding is starting sooner. Setting a rebuilding strategy requires finding detailed and up-to-date figures, a challenging task to do in a time of conflict. We take the venture and compute poverty figures and profile during the conflict using nowcasting techniques based on a sample of households covered in the household income and expenditure survey (HIES) 2009. In addition to the practical importance of this article regarding the rebuilding process strategy of Syria, the article makes a methodological contribution to nowcast the poverty rates in countries plagued with civil conflicts.

Economic policies are often judged by a handful of statistics, some of which may be biased during periods of change. We estimate the income growth implied by the evolution of food demand and durable good ownership in post-reform Brazil and Mexico, and find that changes in consumption patterns are inconsistent with official estimates of near stagnant incomes. That is attributed to biases in the price deflator. The estimated unmeasured income gains are higher for poorer households, implying marked reductions in \"real\" inequality. These findings challenge the conventional wisdom that post-reform income growth was low and did not benefit the poor.

It is commonly agreed that economic policies, including budgetary policies, can have potentially strong distributional effects. Traditional economic analysis held that economic policies affected the income distribution primarily through their impact on the rate of growth. More recently, it has come to be recognized that qualitative aspects of economic growth are probably more important than the rate of growth itself. While recent research has confirmed the potential role of expenditure policies as a redistributive tool, it has also shown that redistribution does not necessarily have to come at the expense of economic growth and efficiency. Although there are substantial analytical and technical problems to be faced in the design of equitable and cost-effective public expenditure programs, unfavorable distributional outcomes of these programs can usually be traced more to political and institutional pressures than to purely technical factors.

To review existing publications using Household Consumption and Expenditure Survey (HCES) data to estimate household dietary nutrient supply to (1) describe scope of available literature, (2) identify the metrics reported and parameters used to construct these metrics, (3) summarise comparisons between estimates derived from HCES and individual dietary assessment data and (4) explore the demographic and socio-economic sub-groups used to characterise risks of nutrient inadequacy. This study is a systematic review of publications identified from online databases published between 2000 to 2019 that used HCES food consumption data to estimate household dietary nutrient supply. Further publications were identified by 'snowballing' the references of included database-identified publications. Publications using data from low- and lower-middle income countries. In total, fifty-eight publications were included. Three metrics were reported that characterised household dietary nutrient supply: apparent nutrient intake per adult-male equivalent per day ( 35), apparent nutrient intake per capita per day ( 24) and nutrient density ( 5). Nutrient intakes were generally overestimated using HCES food consumption data, with several studies finding sizeable discrepancies compared with intake estimates based on individual dietary assessment methods. Sub-group analyses predominantly focused on measuring variation in household dietary nutrient supply according to socio-economic position and geography. HCES data are increasingly being used to assess diets across populations. More research is needed to inform the development of a framework to guide the use of and qualified interpretation of dietary assessments based on these data.

While the EU Commission has encouraged Member States to combine national and international climate change mitigation measures with subnational environmental policies, there has been little harmonized effort towards the quantification of embodied greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from household consumption across European regions. This study develops an inventory of carbon footprints associated with household consumption for 177 regions in 27 EU countries, thus, making a key contribution for the incorporation of consumption-based accounting into local decision-making. Footprint calculations are based on consumer expenditure surveys and environmental and trade detail from the EXIOBASE 2.3 multiregional input-output database describing the world economy in 2007 at the detail of 43 countries, 5 rest-of-the-world regions and 200 product sectors. Our analysis highlights the spatial heterogeneity of embodied GHG emissions within multiregional countries with subnational ranges varying widely between 0.6 and 6.5 tCO2e/cap. The significant differences in regional contribution in terms of total and per capita emissions suggest notable differences with regards to climate change responsibility. The study further provides a breakdown of regional emissions by consumption categories (e.g. housing, mobility, food). In addition, our region-level study evaluates driving forces of carbon footprints through a set of socio-economic, geographic and technical factors. Income is singled out as the most important driver for a region's carbon footprint, although its explanatory power varies significantly across consumption domains. Additional factors that stand out as important on the regional level include household size, urban-rural typology, level of education, expenditure patterns, temperature, resource availability and carbon intensity of the electricity mix. The lack of cross-national region-level studies has so far prevented analysts from drawing broader policy conclusions that hold beyond national and regional borders.

This paper studies empirical facts regarding the effects of unexpected changes in aggregate macroeconomic fiscal policies on consumers that differ depending on individual characteristics. We use data from the Consumption Expenditure Survey to estimate individual-level responses and multipliers for government spending. We find that unexpected fiscal shocks have substantially different effects on consumers depending on their income and age levels: the wealthiest individuals tend to behave according to predictions of standard Real Business Cycle (RBC) models, whereas the poorest ones behave according to standard IS-LM (non-Ricardian) models, most likely due to credit constraints. Furthermore, government spending policy shocks tend to decrease consumption inequality.

Counting the world's poor: problems and possible solutions; by Angus Deaton. Comments on \"counting the world's poor\"; by Martin Ravallion, and T. N. Srinivasan. Ecology, history, and development : a perspective from rural Southeast Asia; by Yujiro Hayami. Productivity growth and sustainability in post-green revolution agriculture: the case of the Indian and Pakistan Punjab; by Rinku Murgai, Mubarik Ali, and Derek Byerlee. The politics of Russian enterprise reform: insiders, local governments, and the obstacles to restructuring; by Raj M. Desai and Itzhak Goldberg.

Objective: The aim of this study was to compare micronutrient intake and inadequacy estimates using household consumption and expenditure survey (HCES) and quantitative 24-h recall (24HR) data among women of reproductive age (WRA) in Kasungu district, Malawi. Methods: We conducted a secondary data analysis utilizing HCES dietary data from a subsample of households in rural areas of Kasungu district, which were sourced from the 2019/20 Malawi Fifth Integrated Household Survey (n = 183); and 24HR data were obtained from WRA in a community-based Addressing Hidden Hunger with Agronomy (AHHA) trial in the same district (n = 177). Micronutrient intakes and inadequacy were estimated under two alternative scenarios of large-scale food fortification (LSFF). We standardized apparent nutrient intakes from the HCES data using the adult female equivalent metric. Results: Estimated prevalence of micronutrient inadequacy fell within 20 percentage points between HCES and 24HR for iron (Fe), zinc (Zn), vitamins B2 and B9 under both no fortification and fortification scenarios. There were some discrepancies for the remaining B vitamins, being consistently large for vitamin B3. Conclusions: In the absence of 24HR data, HCES data can be used to make inferences about some micronutrient intakes and inadequacies among rural WRA in Malawi and to inform decisions regarding LSFF, including vehicle selection and coverage. However, additional efforts are needed to improve HCES for dietary nutrient surveillance given existing limitations.

This paper explores the link between poverty and food insecurity in Pakistan using household survey data and three measures of food insecurity—average calorie availability, minimum dietary energy requirement, and the perception-based Food Insecurity Experience Scale—at national, rural, and urban levels. Our results reveal that poorer households are more likely to be food insecure across all measures. Although reduction in household consumption expenditures and increase in both dependency ratio and household size may worsen the situation of food insecurity, improved economic opportunities (agricultural employment), human capital (education of the household head), inflows of international remittances, ownership of assets (livestock and agricultural land), and access to clean drinking water alleviate food insecurity. Highlighting the need for multidimensional interventions, our analysis for Pakistan reveals that poverty alleviation alone is insufficient to ensure food security.