Institution: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

E-mail: p.hazell@cgiar.org

Biosummary:

Peter B.R. Hazell joined IFPRI in November 1992 as director of the Environment and Production Technology Division. Peter Hazell was previously a principal economist in the World Bank's Agriculture and Rural Development Department. Prior to that he served at IFPRI as director of the Agricultural Growth Linkages Program. A British Citizen, Hazell trained as a general agriculturalist in the United Kingdom and subsequently obtained his Ph.D. in agricultural economics at Cornell University. At IFPRI he conducts research on sustainable farming practices, with a particular focus on property rights issues and the management of climate risks to reduce land degradation in semi-arid regions.

Title: "Public investment, agricultural growth, and poverty alleviation in rural India." Co-author: Shenggen Fan.

Theme: 1C

Abstract:

Rural poverty has fallen sharply in India in recent decades. This paper analyses the factors that have contributed to this downturn, and seeks to unravel the roles of agricultural growth and public investments in rural infrastructure, human capital and agricultural research. Based on an econometric analysis of pooled time series (1970 - 1994) and agro-ecological zone data, the paper analyses the direct and indirect impacts of public investments on agricultural growth and poverty alleviation. The paper also compares the marginal returns for growth and poverty alleviation from additional investments in different types of public investments, and between different types of agro-ecological zones. It is found that additional investments in roads have the largest impact on growth and poverty alleviation, while agricultural research ranks second. Moreover, the returns to all types of investments are higher in many rainfed areas than in irrigated areas, and they have larger poverty impacts. This also holds for some of the poorest rainfed areas.