Disentangling the Relationship Between Social Protection and Social Cohesion: Introduction to the Special Issue.

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 cohesion has emerged as a central goal of development policy. The introduction and the papers in the SI use a common definition of social cohesion as a multi-faceted phenomenon, comprising three attributes: cooperation, trust and inclusive identity. This introductory article provides a conceptual framework linking social protection to social cohesion, shows the current empirical evidence for the bi-directional linkages, and highlights how the papers in the SI contribute to filling existing research gaps. In addition to this introduction, the SI encompasses seven papers, covering different world regions and social protection schemes, and using different quantitative and qualitative methods.

Il existe d'importantes données probantes concernant l'effet de la protection sociale sur la pauvreté et la vulnérabilité. Cependant, les études qui se penchent sur les effets au niveau de la société sont peu nombreuses. Cet article fait office d'introduction à un numéro spécial qui étudie la relation entre la protection sociale et la cohésion sociale dans les pays à revenu faible et intermédiaire. Au cours des dernières années, la cohésion sociale est devenue un objectif central de la politique de développement. L'introduction et les articles de ce numéro spécial utilisent une définition commune de la cohésion sociale en tant que phénomène à multiples facettes, comprenant trois attributs: la coopération, la confiance et l'identité inclusive. Cet article introductif fournit un cadre conceptuel reliant la protection sociale à la cohésion sociale, montre les preuves empiriques actuelles des liens bidirectionnels et met en lumière la façon dont les articles de ce numéro spécial contribuent à combler les lacunes de la recherche existante. En plus de cette introduction, le numéro spécial comprend sept articles qui couvrent différentes régions du monde et divers régimes de protection sociale, et font usage de différentes méthodes quantitatives et qualitatives.

Constructing Well-Being and Poverty Dimensions on Political Grounds.

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 selecting dimensions, under certain conditions. We illustrate our Constitutional Approach by deriving a set of well-being dimensions from an analysis of the Italian Constitution. We argue that this method is both an improvement on those used in the existing literature from the ethical point of view, and has a strong potential for providing the ethical basis of a conception of well-being for the public affairs of a pluralist society. In the final part, we elaborate on the implications for measuring well-being based on data, by ranking Italian regions in terms of well-being, and pointing out the differences in results produced by different methods.

The role of food and nutrition system approaches in tackling hidden hunger.

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 people worldwide. While the complexity and underlying determinants of undernutrition have been well-understood for decades, the scaling of food and nutrition system approaches that combine sustainable agriculture aimed at improved diet diversity and livelihoods have been limited in their development and implementation. However, an integrated system approach to reduce hidden hunger could potentially serve as a sustainable opportunity.

Child nutrition in Mozambique in 2003: the role of mother's schooling and nutrition knowledge.

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 interaction with the mother's nutrition knowledge and household wealth in order to elucidate the mechanisms underlying their ultimate effect on child height. The estimates obtained through instrumental variable regression show that the direct effect of the mother's schooling is large but that the rate at which it increases declines as her educational level rises. Primary education seems to be a key to enhance the mothers' general knowledge, which then improves the allocation of resources in regard to children's well-being and the care for the child. A higher educational level attained by the mother is likely to play only a minimal and indirect role in her child's nutrition, by expanding her economic opportunities. This is because more educated mothers have also more qualified and time-consuming jobs, which reduces the time spent for childcare. Mothers with higher levels of nutrition knowledge, acquired primarily outside of school, are able to choose a more diversified diet for their children and, broadly speaking, to utilize food more effectively. Based on a second technique, the instrumental variable quantile regression, we are able to draw a double conclusion: that mothers' nutrition knowledge contributes to height increases among extremely deprived children, and that mothers' formal education and household wealth are slightly more important for relatively well-off children.