Food Security in the South Pacific Island Countries with Special Reference to the Fiji Islands

This paper analyses the status of food security in selected South Pacific Island countries

Food Price Crisis, Poverty, and Inequality

This paper simulates how a doubling of food prices affects absolute poverty and the food-price-adjusted real income distribution. We assume unsubsidized world food prices in order to derive the cost of poverty deepening and poverty expansion. We also estimate the degree to which inequality increases if no measures are put in place to offset rising food prices. Both measures are vulnerability indicators useful for social policy planning. Our results show that low-income countries experience dramatic increases in absolute poverty as a result of doubling food prices. Middle-income countries experience the greatest decrease in absolute income, which contributes most to an increase in world income inequality. The paper estimates that the global dollar value of the absolute poverty gap ($1.25/day) has the potential to increase by 400%, with poverty deepening accounting for two thirds of the increase

Distributive impacts of the food price crisis in the Andean region

This study analyses the distributive consequences associated with the recent international food price crisis in the Andean region. The study explores the distributive repercussions of the crisis by means of a simple simulation exercise which isolates the direct and short-term effects of actual increases in food prices across the Andean region. The paper finds substantive and heterogeneous poverty impacts, ranging from two to six per cent points in the incidence of poverty. Results are found very sensitive to the net consumer (or producer) position of the household, and less so across other characteristics of the household. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.