Francesco BurchiDeutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik · Transformation of Economic and Social Systems
Francesco Burchi
PhD
Senior Researcher, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS)
About
89
Publications
62,633
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
1,661
Citations
Introduction
My current areas of research are: (1) Measuring and Assessing Multidimensional Poverty across countries; (2) Analysis of group (by gender, rural-urban) disparities in poverty; (3) The role of Social Policies in enhancing Social Cohesion.
Additional affiliations
November 2005 - October 2010
April 2013 - present
October 2008 - October 2010
Publications
Publications (89)
While we have extensive information on the trends in income poverty, little is known about the trends in multidimensional poverty. The paper tries to fill this gap by assessing the changes in multidimensional poverty in 54 countries since 2000. The analysis relies on two individual-based indices, the G-CSPI and the G-M0, which combine three dimensi...
This paper proposes a new index of multidimensional poverty, called the Global Correlation Sensitive Poverty Index (G-CSPI), which has three interesting features. First, it encompasses three dimensions: decent work, education and access to drinking water and sanitation, which largely overlap with the list of ideal dimensions obtained by expanding t...
The long-standing tradition of empirical studies investigating the nexus between economic growth and poverty concentrates mainly on monetary poverty. In contrast, little is known about the relationship between economic growth and multidimensional poverty. Consequently, this study seeks to assess the elasticity of multidimensional poverty to growth,...
Poverty and gender equality are at the heart of the 2030 Agenda and are key strategic areas for Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). It has been often argued that poverty is gendered: at the 1995 UN World Conference on Women, 70 per cent of the world’s poor was said to be female. However, that figure is not bac...
Despite the growing demand for gender-disaggregated statistics on poverty, there is no crosscountry evidence of gender disparities in poverty because poverty-both monetary and multidimensional-is measured at the household level. This paper contributes to filling this gap, by using two novel individual-level indices of multidimensional poverty. Rely...
Public works programs (PWPs) are among the most used social protection instruments in low-and middle-income countries. While their impacts on poverty, food security and labor outcomes have been increasingly examined, there is a notable lack of systematic theoretical and empirical research focusing on their effects on climate resilience. To fill thi...
Despite the large demand for gender-disaggregated poverty statistics, so far it has been impossible to assess gender differentials in poverty for several countries. This is mostly because the available indices of income and multidimensional poverty are computed at the household level. The chapter contributes to fill this research gap by adopting tw...
Inequality is bad per se and has adverse effects, among other things, on economic development and the environment. It is also often argued that high and increasing inequalities put societies under stress, which increases the likelihood of social conflicts. However, the literature on this topic is scarce and some of the conclusions are not adequatel...
Through a sequential mixed-methods approach, the paper investigates the effects of the different components of the Tingathe Economic Empowerment Programme (TEEP) on social cohesion in Malawi. The TEEP is an integrated social protection scheme offering to three different groups these services: a lump-sum transfer, a financial/business training conne...
While there is substantial evidence of the effect of social protection on poverty and vulnerability, limited research has focused on societal outcomes. This paper serves as introduction to a special issue (SI) examining the relationship between social protection and social cohesion in low- and middle-income countries. Over the last years, social co...
The long-standing tradition of empirical studies investigating the nexus between economic growth and poverty has concentrated on monetary poverty. This paper engages in the little-explored debate on the relationship between growth and multidimensional poverty, by employing two novel, individual-based multidimensional poverty indices: the G-CSPI and...
Social cohesion is key for sustainable development. While social cohesion has suffered in many societies from the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic, high levels of social cohesion have helped to overcome critical situations during the pandemic in other societies. As a consequence, protecting and strengthening social cohesion has become an incre...
This paper proposes a new index of multidimensional poverty, called the Global Correlation Sensitive Poverty Index (G-CSPI), which has three interesting features. First, it encompasses three dimensions: decent work, education and access to drinking water and sanitation, which largely overlap with the list of ideal dimensions obtained by expanding t...
The paper examines the effects of social protection on food consumption and nutrition, two central variables in the Sustainable Development Goal 2 of the 2030 Agenda. First, it discusses the theoretical mechanisms through which different social protection schemes can influence the various indicators of food consumption and nutrition. Major attentio...
This part of the handbook discusses the multiple, potential and actual, effects of social protection. We start with more immediate impacts, namely those on income poverty and inequality, and then gradually move to more indirect ones: nutrition, health, economic development and finally social cohesion.
The primary objective of social protection is to fight poverty and food insecurity. However, there are good theoretical arguments to support the idea that it can also contribute to more complex outcomes, such as social cohesion. This paper investigates the effects of the Tingathe Economic Empowerment Programme (TEEP) in Malawi on three key pillars...
Social protection and revenue collection are often regarded as potential drivers of social cohesion. The article joins this debate, providing three main contributions. First, we carefully discuss the concept of social cohesion and endorse one specific definition. Second, we propose using the concept of the “fiscal contract” as the key theoretical l...
This study evaluates the impact of an agroecological school gardening program on eating behavior, agroecological knowledge and educational capabilities of 9–12 year-old schoolchildren in Montevideo, Uruguay. The study uses a mixed method approach and a sample of 16 schools and 665 schoolchildren. The results show that Programa Huertas en Centros Ed...
This paper has three major objectives: (1) to analyse whether the gender of politicians in India is relevant to the educational achievements of the residents of the districts in which they were elected; (2) to test whether politicians are more sensitive to the needs of the people of same gender and (3) to explore the potential channels through whic...
An adequate cross-country comparison of multidimensional poverty requires sound poverty measures. This paper focuses on two central, but often neglected, challenges: the identification of the best theoretical framework and the selection of poverty dimensions. Regarding the first problem, it is argued that Amartya Sen’s capability approach provides...
Social cohesion is an important precondition for peaceful and economically successful societies. The question of how societies hold together and which policies enhance social cohesion has become a relevant topic on both national and international agendas. This Briefing Paper stresses the contribution of revenue collection and social policies, and i...
This One-Pager presents the main findings of a study conducted by the German Development Institute (DIE) (Burchi et al., 2019). The paper uses a new indicator of multidimensional poverty, the Global Correlation Sensitive Poverty Index (G-CSPI), which includes three dimensions: education, (decent) employment and health (Burchi et al., 2018). This in...
Call for papers for a workshop on
“Social protection for social cohesion”
Bonn, 4-5 December 2019
The primary objective of social protection, especially in low- and middle-income countries, is to tackle poverty and vulnerability. In addition, it is often argued that social protection schemes or systems have the potentiality to achieve other object...
Since the beginning of the 21st century we have witnessed a proliferation of social protection schemes in several countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Recent empirical evidence points to the effectiveness of these policies, in particular of the cash transfers (CTs) in improving the ability of beneficiaries to meet their basic needs. However, it seems t...
Il ruolo delle cooperative di ridurre la povertà e favorire lo sviluppo umano è sempre più riconosciuto nella letteratura accademica (Sen 2000; Birchall, 2003; 2004 Bibby e Shaw, 2005; Münker, 2012; Vicari e De Muro, 2012; Vicari, in uscita) e dalle istituzioni internazionali (FAO e altre, 2011; Nazioni Unite 1992-2013). Particolare enfasi è stata...
The 2030 Agenda has provided new impetus to two facets of the struggle for poverty alleviation, which is a central goal of the international development community. First, poverty is no longer viewed strictly in monetary terms, but rather as a multidimensional phenomenon. Second, the need to reduce poverty for different social groups and not just at...
In developing countries and in particular in sub-Saharan Africa, social protection schemes tend to operate in silos. However, schemes targeting the same geographical areas may have synergies that have not yet been examined, and which are worth scrutinising. This paper contributes to this knowledge gap by examining the joint impacts of two social pr...
The present study assesses the impacts of an innovative pilot project called the Tingathe Economic Empowerment Project (EEP) in Malawi. The project targets ultra-poor and labour-constrained households. Designed as a cluster-randomised-control-trial, it provides to different village clusters a) a lump-sum transfer; b) financial and business training...
en Food insecurity is one of the international community's priorities in sub‐Saharan Africa (SSA). This article investigates the role played by cash transfers (CTs), the social protection scheme with the largest coverage, in enhancing food security in this region. First, it offers an innovative conceptual framework for explaining the channels throu...
The first Sustainable Development Goal of the 2030 Agenda calls for ending “poverty in all its forms everywhere”, therefore recognising that poverty is more than just a lack of a sufficient income. Nevertheless, some scholars argue that an income-based measure of poverty is able
to sufficiently capture poverty in other dimensions as well. This cla...
The Agenda 2030 clearly recognizes that poverty is more than just lack of a sufficient amount of income. However, some scholars argue that an income-based measure of poverty can sufficiently capture poverty in other dimensions. Unfortunately, the available international indicators of multidimensional poverty suffer from several weaknesses and canno...
O primeiro Objetivo de Desenvolvimento Sustentável da Agenda 2030 clama por "acabar com a pobreza em todas as suas formas, em todos os lugares", em reconhecimento de que a pobreza é mais que a falta de uma renda suficiente. Entretanto, alguns estudiosos defendem que uma medida de pobreza com base na renda é também capaz de abarcar suficientemente a...
O primeiro Objetivo de Desenvolvimento Sustentável da Agenda 2030 clama por "acabar com a pobreza em todas as suas formas, em todos os lugares", em reconhecimento de que a pobreza é mais que a falta de uma renda suficiente. Entretanto, alguns estudiosos defendem que uma medida de pobreza com base na renda é também capaz de abarcar suficientemente a...
This paper compares the impact of social protection strategies based on cash transfers in a selection of lower‐middle‐income and low‐income sub‐Saharan African countries. We use the synthetic control method to evaluate changes in the trajectories of the prevalence of undernourishment indicators during the 1990s and 2000s for several relevant countr...
This paper compares the impact of social protection strategies based on cash transfers in a selection
of lower-middle-income and low-income sub-Saharan African countries. We use the synthetic control
method to evaluate changes in the trajectories of the prevalence of undernourishment indicators
during the 1990s and 2000s for several relevant countr...
The paper addresses the problem of justifying ethically sound dimensions of poverty or well-being for use in a multidimensional framework. We combine Sen’s capability approach and Rawls’ method of political constructivism and argue that the constitution and its interpretative practice can serve as an ethically suitable informational basis for selec...
Food security and agricultural-led industrialisation are pivotal development objectives in Ethiopia. One of the main challenges this country faces is increasing agricultural productivity by integrating smallholder farmers into a high-value agricultural commodity supply chain. This paper examines an integrated project—the Agricultural Value Chains P...
With the signing of the 2030 Agenda, the international community has committed to ending poverty in all its forms. This first Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) recognises poverty as a multidimensional phenomenon that goes beyond the simple lack of a sufficient amount of income. However, the way the SDG 1 and, in particular, Target 1.2 – “reduce …...
Rural households in Ethiopia are exposed to a variety of covariate and idiosyncratic risks. In 2005, the Ethiopian government introduced the Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) and in 2011 launched the Community Based Health Insurance Scheme (CBHI). This paper analyses the interaction between the two schemes and their joint effect on health care u...
Eine der vorrangigen Aufgaben der internationalen Gemeinschaft ist die Bekämpfung der Ernährungsunsicherheit, wie im Nachhaltigkeitsziel 2 der vor kurzem verabschiedeten Agenda 2030 festgeschrieben: " Den Hunger beenden, Ernährungssicherheit und eine bessere Ernährung erreichen und eine nachhaltige Landwirtschaft fördern ". Die von der Ernährungsun...
One of the priorities of the international community is alleviating food insecurity, as stated in Goal 2 of the recently approved 2030 Agenda: "End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture". The region with the highest prevalence of food insecurity is sub-Saharan Africa (SSA); most of the efforts must...
The article explains how co-operatives can contribute to empowering and giving a voice to the poor and to other marginalized groups, being a means of collective human agency as individuals come together to pursue goals that they value and have reason to value. In particular it explores the potential of co-operatives to promote women’s empowerment a...
This paper has a threefold objective. First, it provides a comprehensive review of different approaches to analysing food security. Second, it highlights the added value provided by the capability approach and the human development paradigm. Third, it proposes a methodology to assess food security through this approach. Our proposal entails three b...
This article engages in the debate on the effects of early childhood health and children's cognition at preschool and school ages in low- and middle-income countries. On the basis of three rounds of the 'Young Lives' panel, it endorses a multidimensional approach to health. A 'suite of indicators' of malnutrition and morbidity, and a composite Mult...
This article is the Introduction to the Special Issue on “Capability Approach and Multidimensional Well-being in High-income Countries”. The volume offers an in-depth investigation of the major methodological challenges faced in the attempt to measuring and analyzing well-being in high-income countries and portrays people’s well-being conditions in...
In recent years, a large literature on indicators of well-being and quality of life has emerged. While all these indicators are an important step toward the recognition of well-being as a multidimensional phenomenon, they are often rooted in very different approaches—when we can identify a relevant “theoretical” framework—such as basic needs, happi...
Goal 4 is about ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting life-long learning opportunities for all. It is, in general, well-formulated. Unlike the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), it focusses predominantly on educational / learning outcomes and cognitive skills rather than school attendance and enrolment, thereby taking i...
Goal 5 is about achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls. The focus of the goal is ideal and essential for development: to create equal opportunities between men and women across economic and political fronts and to empower women in areas where they are systematically disadvantaged and discriminated against. As with Goal 10 (“Re...
Goal 2 is about ending hunger, enhancing food and nutrition security, and promoting sustainable agriculture. Agriculture is viewed as the central element of this goal, therewith endorsing an agricultural, food-based, rural-centred approach. However, to alleviate hunger and promote food security and nutrition, there can be other “means” that are eve...
![Figure 2. An integrated food and nutrition system (adapted from [62]).](profile/Emile-Frison/publication/281631952/figure/fig2/AS:284497170976776@1444840819278/An-integrated-food-and-nutrition-system-adapted-from-62_Q320.jpg)
The paper addresses the problem of justifying the derivation of ethically sound dimensions of poverty or well-being for use in a multidimensional framework. We combine Sen’s capability approach and Rawls’ method of political constructivism and argue that the constitution and its interpretative practice can serve as an ethically suitable information...
SDG 2 is about ending hunger, enhancing food and nutrition security, and promoting sustainable agriculture. Agriculture is viewed as the central element of this goal, therewith endorsing an agricultural, food-based, rural-centred approach. However, to alleviate hunger and promote food security and nutrition, there can be other “means” that are even...
This article is the Introduction to the Special Issue on “Capability Approach and Multidimensional Well-being in High-income Countries”. The volume offers an in-depth investigation of the major methodological challenges faced in the attempt to measuring and analyzing well-being in high-income countries and portrays people's well-being conditions in...
This paper is concerned with the construction of an appropriate conceptual framework for measuring human development with a focus on high-income countries. Too often, the measurement exercise is based on a purely
empirical basis where indicators simply reflect data availability and “conventional wisdom”. This is likely to misguide policy-makers. We...
Most development organisations have traditionally used the Logical Framework Approach to design, monitor and evaluate development projects. We depart from this mechanical view and join an emerging literature that recognises project complexity as well as the importance of institutional dynamics. The article deals with an evaluation of a multi-sector...
Reducing gender gaps in education, employment and political decision making, among other dimensions, has long been an important development objective. This is confirmed by the international consensus reached over Millennium Development Goal 3 (MDG 3): “Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women”. Ensuring equal access to education, in particular, is...
The paper investigates the effect of co-operative membership on people's capability to participate in household decision-making and on domestic gender relations. Our hypothesis is that the democratisation process activated in genuine co-operatives, authentic member-owned forms of business, may then be transferred to the household. We tested this in...
Multidimensional theories of well-being are locked into a debate about value judgment. They seek to settle which dimensions should matter for measurement and policy, and, more importantly, on what grounds to decide what should matter. Moreover, there is a gulf between theory and practice, given that measurement and policy are rarely rooted in a coh...
This paper engages in the debate on the effects of children’s health on their education in later life stages in low- and middle-income countries. Using three rounds from the rich panel data of the Young Lives study in Ethiopia, India Peru and Vietnam, it endorses a multidimensional approach to health (and poverty in general). In detail, the paper h...
This paper contributes to the debate on the effects of women’s political representation. It has a threefold objective:
(1) to analyse whether the gender of elected politicians is relevant to the educational achievements of residents of the Indian districts in which they were elected;
(2) to test whether politicians are more sensitive to the need...
In the recent years a large literature on indicators of well-being and quality of life has proliferated, all departing from a strict economic view of these phenomena. While all these indicators sign an important step for the recognition of well-being as a multidimensional phenomenon, they are often rooted in very different
approaches –when we can i...
In this article, we analyze inequality changes in Peru under the first Garcia government (1985–1990). Our findings indicate that stability in consumption inequality and a substantial decline in wealth inequality were achieved, probably thanks to the government's demand-led policies, despite their deleterious effects on other macroeconomic indicator...
Background: The paper engages in the ongoing debate regarding the determinants of child nutrition in developing countries and stresses the potential contribution of the education of household members other than the child’s parents.
Objective: The aim of the paper is threefold: (1) to verify whether there is evidence of the key role of parents’ ed...
This paper is part of a series of recent research commissioned for the African Human Development Report. The authors include leading academics and practitioners from Africa and around the world, as well as UNDP researchers. The findings, interpretations and conclusions are strictly those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of...
The paper has a two-fold objective. First, it theoretically and empirically analyses the effects of democracy on famine mortality. Second, it examines the role played by other institutional/governance factors. The econometric exercises realised with data on a group of emerging and developing countries confirm the validity of Amartya Sen's ‘democrac...
![An integrated food and nutrition system (adapted from [62]).](profile/Francesco-Burchi/publication/51111347/figure/fig2/AS:202499542786065@1425291061788/An-integrated-food-and-nutrition-system-adapted-from-62_Q320.jpg)
One of the World's greatest challenges is to secure sufficient and healthy food for all, and to do so in an environmentally sustainable manner. This review explores the interrelationships of food, health, and environment, and their role in addressing chronic micronutrient deficiencies, also known as "hidden hunger", affecting over two billion peopl...
This paper is a study of the determinants of the anthropometric status of preschool children in Mozambique. Using the 2003 Demographic and Health Survey, we provide insights into two main explanatory factors: the mother's schooling and the mother's nutrition knowledge. Rather than treating the mother's schooling as a black box, we analyze its inter...
Al Vertice mondiale sull'alimentazione del 1996 si stabilě di promuovere operazioni di triangolazione dell'aiuto alimentare per sconfiggere la fame mondiale. Considerando i criteri di efficacia, efficienza e trasparenza, il saggio sostiene che tale Obiettivo ha una giustificazione teorica, ma sia la triangolazione che l'acquisto in loco sono buone...
In the Rome Declaration of the 1996 World Food Summit (WFS) the international community committed itself to fighting world food insecurity, which hits developing countries the hardest. The Declaration was followed by a ‘Plan of Action’, which identified strategies and means to reduce food insecurity in the world. The Plan of Action covers several m...
At the 1996 World Food Summit it was agreed to promote triangular food aid operations in order to fight world hunger. Looking into the criteria of effectiveness, efficiency and transparency, in this paper it is argued that the Objective has some theoretical justification, but both triangular and local purchases can be good food aid delivery modes....
Food insecurity is at the heart of the international movement to overcome hunger and poverty. The first Millennium Development Goal (MDG) sets as its target the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger, with a target of halving the incidence of poverty and hunger by 2015. This research contributes to that process, by analysing the connections amon...
In the world there are approximately 800 million people who live in condition of food insecurity and illiteracy. This paper shows that education is a key to food security for rural populations in developing countries. Attention is drawn to rural areas because they are traditionally more disadvantaged by national educational policies. The theoretica...
Al Vertice mondiale sull’alimentazione del 1996 si stabilì di promuovere operazioni di triangolazione dell’aiuto alimentare per sconfiggere la fame mondiale. Considerando i criteri di efficacia, efficienza e trasparenza, il saggio sostiene che tale Obiettivo ha una giustificazione teorica, ma sia la triangolazione che l’acquisto in loco sono buone...
Food insecurity and illiteracy involve more than 800 million people today, most of whom live in rural areas. In this paper I aim to explain the linkages existing between education, development, and food security. First, I explore the role given to education in the different development theories, evolved since 1960s on, and then I concentrate on the...
In this paper we analyze whether and which political institutions are important for famine prevention and for keeping the levels of inequality low. While famines are sudden crises hitting a country, inequality is a structural problem. As a consequence, the institutions needed might be very different. The econometric exercises realized on a group of...
This paper examines the role of mother’s education in expanding children’s nutritional capabilities in Mozambique, a country where both educational and nutritional deprivations are dramatic. The econometric results, based on data from the 2003 DHS survey, suggest that mother’s schooling is a key determinant of children’s nutrition, but its direct m...
Food insecurity and illiteracy involve more than 800 million people today. In the proposed paper, I argue that education is a fundamental factor in achieving food security for rural populations in developing countries. I base my arguments on the Human Development Approach, according to which, education is both intrinsically and instrumentally relev...
Questions
Questions (5)
I have a database with the mean and standard deviations of poverty for several countries, together with the sample size based on which these statistics were calculated. Is there a way to compute a t-test of means between pairs of countries without typing the values? For example, Stata calculator imposes typing the numbers, and for several countries it takes a lot of time.
It is often argued that even in low- and middle-income countries social protection or, more in general, social policies can improve social cohesion and state-society relationship. However, it is very difficult to find evidence to support this argument. Do you know any empirical study?
Are you aware of any country-level legislation that imposes a government to demonstrate the potential effects of a financial law or a policy on well-being indicators, social indicators or poverty-related indicators?
Or do you know any praxis of governments that take pre-determined wellbeing/social indicators seriously to plan or evaluate their policies (maybe in cooperation with the national institutes of statistics)?
