What's New

In 2006, the Indian government launched the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS). This program guarantees rural households both the legal right to employment for up to 100 days per year and a minimum agricultural wage set at the state level. Since its launch in 2006, MGNREGS has become the largest public works project in the world, but questions remain about the program’s true effectiveness. In particular, critics have highlighted the program’s high costs, inefficiencies, and potential for corruption.

As concerns over COVID-19's potential impacts on food prices and food security continue, accurate and timely data and information are more crucial than ever. On May 8, the Food Security Portal hosted a webinar on near-real-time monitoring of food crisis risk factors like the COVID-19 pandemic, food price volatility, climate-driven shocks, conflict, and economic downturns.

An estimated 152 million children around the world are stuck in child labor.

The FAO Food Price Index plunged to a 17-month low in May, driven in large part by sustained negative economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Prices across all sub-indices declined with the exception of sugar prices.

This post originally appeared on IFPRI's Ethiopia Strategy Support Program (ESSP) blog.

The share of households consuming dairy products in Addis Ababa has dropped by 11 percentage points since the COVID-19 crisis, seemingly linked to perceived risks of consuming dairy products. All income groups declined their consumption, except for the richest quintile where the share of consuming households changed little.