@article{f83cbae133714e4098da3bfe13db0057,
title = "Cash, food, or vouchers? An application of the Market Information and Food Insecurity Response Analysis Framework in urban and rural Kenya",
abstract = "This paper uses the Market Information and Food Insecurity Response Analysis Framework to analyze data on food market intermediation and on consumer behavior and preferences in order to clarify whether market-based cash and voucher programs are likely to prove effective for addressing food insecurity in rural and urban study sites in Kenya. The findings carry important implications for food security interventions by government and operational agencies. We confirm that context matters when undertaking a response analysis. While we find that cash and/or vouchers are appropriate in both urban and rural locations, markets in surveyed urban settlements can respond better to a large injection of cash or vouchers than can surveyed rural areas. Moreover, household vulnerabilities are associated with household preferences in different ways across the two sites. In rural areas, female headed households and households reporting a physical limit to market access were among the groups that strongly preferred food aid to cash or vouchers while households with these characteristics in urban areas preferred the flexibility of cash or vouchers to food.",
keywords = "Food insecurity, Kenya, MIFIRA, Response analysis, Urban food insecurity",
author = "Hope Michelson and Lentz, {Erin C.} and Richard Mulwa and Mitchell Morey and Laura Cramer and Megan McGlinchy and Barrett, {Christopher B.}",
note = "Funding Information: Acknowledgments We are grateful to Japheth Muli and Martin Waweru at Catholic Relief Services in Nairobi and our enumerator teams from the Diocese of Machakos and the Archdiocese of Nairobi. Aschelew Tesfaye of the World Food Program, and Justus Liku of CARE provided valuable guidance throughout. The research was funded through a United States Agency for International Development BASIS Assets and Market Access Collaborative Research Support Program grant No. EDH-A-00-06-00003-00. The views expressed are solely the authors{\textquoteright} and do not represent any official agency. Any remaining errors are ours alone. Funding Information: Chris Barrett is the Stephen B. and Janice G. Ashley Professor of Applied Economics and Manage- ment and International Professor of Agriculture in the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Eco- nomics and Management and Pro- fessor in the Department of Economics at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, USA. He holds degrees from Princeton, Oxford and the University of Wisconsin- Madison. Professor Barrett has published widely and has been principal investigator on extramu ral research grants from the National Science Foundation, The Pew Charitable Trusts, the Rockefeller Foundation, USAID and other sponsors. He served as editor of the American Journal of Agricultural Economics from 2003 to 2008, and presently serves on multiple editorial boards, including for Food Security. Professor Barrett has won several university, national and international awards for teaching, research and public outreach, and was elected a Fellow both of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association and of the African Association of Agricultural Economists in 2010. Funding Information: toral research fellow at Colum- bia University{\textquoteright}s Earth Institute in the Tropical Agriculture and Rural Environment program. She holds a PhD in applied eco- nomics from Cornell University and an MS in agricultural eco- nomics from the University of Illinois. Her dissertation focused on Walmart{\textquoteright}s effects on small farmer suppliers in Nicaragua and won an honorable mention for best dissertation of the year in 2010 from the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA). Her research has been supported by grants from the SSRC and the AAEA. Ongoing research projects relate to small farmer market participation and Walmart as well as the application of new tools to measure farmers{\textquoteright} risk and time preferences and analysis of the adoption of technologies related to climate risk mitigation in Sub-Saharan Africa.",
year = "2012",
month = aug,
doi = "10.1007/s12571-012-0177-0",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "4",
pages = "455--469",
journal = "Food Security",
issn = "1876-4517",
publisher = "Springer Netherlands",
number = "3",
}