Centralized implementation mandates of Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) require a full and uniform payment to each person in an eligible household. In practice, however, communities do not receive enough funding to fully implement the program. Therefore, communities must exercise local discretion in allocating aid. We recover the preferences revealed by local communities’ aid allocations and find they are pro-poor, allocating more to underprivileged groups with lower wage earning potential (e.g., teenage girls vs. teenage boys, adult women vs. adult men, elderly vs. working age adults). Despite communities’ pro-poor implementation, the program with constrained funding does not significantly lower overall poverty rates. In simulations with full funding, the program reduces poverty in both cases of centralized and decentralized program control, using different criteria for the allocation of funds. The major policy implication is that the financial scale of the safety net program is more important to poverty reduction than the locus of control over implementation.

This study presents an inventory of practices highlighting the role rural organizations play in: (i) delivering member-based social assistance and insurance, and other complementary services; and (ii) collaborating with national and international counterparts in the delivery of national and international social protection programmes. The inventory builds on an initial review made by FAO in 2014. As a follow-up, in 2015 FAO issued a call for proposals from development agencies and international organizations in order to collect relevant experiences. The results were shared through a webinar held at the end of 2015. The process culminated with this report and a series of case studies (case studies are annexed at the end of this report). This inventory should contribute to enhancing the understanding of development practitioners regarding the strengths, limitations and opportunities associated with a stronger and more systematic role of rural organizations in SP.

Poverty remains a pervasive and complex phenomenon in Sub-Saharan Africa. Part of the agenda in recent years to tackle poverty in Africa has been the launching of social safety nets programs. All countries have now deployed safety net interventions as part of their core development programs. The number of programs has skyrocketed since the mid-2000s though many programs remain limited in size. This shift in social policy reflects the progressive evolution in the understanding of the role that social safety nets can play in the fight against poverty and vulnerability, and more generally in the human capital and growth agenda. Evidence on their impacts on equity, resilience, and opportunity is growing, and makes a foundational case for investments in safety nets as a major component of national development plans. For this potential to be realized, however, safety net programs need to be significantly scaled-up. Such scaling up will involve a series of technical considerations to identify the parameters, tools, and processes that can deliver maximum benefits to the poor and vulnerable. However, in addition to technical considerations, and at least as importantly, this report argues that a series of decisive shifts need to occur in three other critical spheres: political, institutional, and fiscal. First, the political processes that shape the extent and nature of social policy need to be recognized, by stimulating political appetite for safety nets, choosing politically smart parameters, and harnessing the political impacts of safety nets to promote their sustainability. Second, the anchoring of safety net programs in institutional arrangements †“ related to the overarching policy framework for safety nets, the functions of policy and coordination, as well as program management and implementation †“ is particularly important as programs expand and are increasingly implemented through national channels. And third, in most countries, the level and predictability of resources devoted to the sector needs to increase for safety nets to reach the desired scale, through increased efficiency, increased volumes and new sources of financing, and greater ability to effectively respond to shocks. This report highlights the implications which political, institutional, and fiscal aspects have for the choice and design of programs. Fundamentally, it argues that these considerations are critical to ensure the successful scaling-up of social safety nets in Africa, and that ignoring them could lead to technically-sound, but practically impossible, choices and designs.

The perception of Ethiopia projected in the media is often one of chronic poverty and hunger, but this bleak assessment does not accurately reflect most of the country today. Ethiopia encompasses a wide variety of agroecologies and peoples. Its agriculture sector, economy, and food security status are equally complex. In fact, since 2001 the per capita income in certain rural areas has risen by more than 50 percent, and crop yields and availability have also increased. Higher investments in roads and mobile phone technology have led to improved infrastructure and thereby greater access to markets, commodities, services, and information. In Food and Agriculture in Ethiopia: Progress and Policy Challenges, Paul Dorosh and Shahidur Rashid, along with other experts, tell the story of Ethiopia's political, economic, and agricultural transformation. The book is designed to provide empirical evidence to shed light on the complexities of agricultural and food policy in today's Ethiopia, highlight major policies and interventions of the past decade, and provide insights into building resilience to natural disasters and food crises. It examines the key issues, constraints, and opportunities that are likely to shape a food-secure future in Ethiopia, focusing on land quality, crop production, adoption of high-quality seed and fertilizer, and household income. Students, researchers, policy analysts, and decisionmakers will find this book a useful overview of Ethiopia's political, economic, and agricultural transformation as well as a resource for major food policy issues in Ethiopia. Contributors: Dawit Alemu, Guush Berhane, Jordan Chamberlin, Sarah Coll-Black, Paul Dorosh, Berhanu Gebremedhin, Sinafikeh Asrat Gemessa, Daniel O. Gilligan, John Graham, Kibrom Tafere Hirfrfot, John Hoddinott, Adam Kennedy, Neha Kumar, Mehrab Malek, Linden McBride, Dawit Kelemework Mekonnen, Asfaw Negassa, Shahidur Rashid, Emily Schmidt, David Spielman, Alemayehu Seyoum Taffesse, Seneshaw Tamiru, James Thurlow, William Wiseman.

How Much Do You Believe That What Happens to You Is the Result of Your Own Actions—or Do Circumstances Beyond Your Control Largely Determine Your Fate? Locus of Control (LOC) is a phrase used by psychologists to describe a widely effective way of assessing an individual’s potential for success—personal, social, and financial. LOC measures how much you believe what happens to you is the result of your own actions or, conversely, of forces and circumstances beyond your control. People who accept that they are largely in control of their lives tend to do better than those who feel that fate or external factors rule what they do, especially in novel and difficult situations. This book explains LOC research, until now mainly confined to academic circles, in terms easily understandable to the average person. The author, a clinical psychologist who has spent nearly five decades investigating and writing about LOC, helps the reader to explore his or her own locus of control and what those orientations might mean for how life is lived. He discusses the extensively documented relationship between LOC and academic achievement, personal and social adjustment, health, and financial success. Dr. Nowicki notes that there has been an increasing tendency among Americans to feel as though their lives are slipping out of their control, and he identifies ways to reverse this negative trend. He describes how the Locus of Control is learned and demonstrates ways in which it can be changed to yield higher levels of achievement, success, personal satisfaction, and better interactions with others.

"Behavioral Methods in Social Welfare" offers positive proof that behaviorism has come of age in social work. Steven Paul Schinke and the contributors to this volume are social work practitioners who document their attempts to extend the basic tenets of behavioral psychology from the laboratory, clinic, and classroom to the full range of client groups and social problems that make up the practice of social work. In social work education, traditionally to the extent it appeared in the curriculum at all, behavioral content appeared in electives or in courses not focused on practice. It is a true measure of progress that behavioral methods are now visible, integral component of social work education and practice.The authors of each piece in this collection indicate progress in developing an empirically based approach to social work practice. Despite the impressive documentation contained in the present volume, no conclusive evidence as to the effectiveness of behavioral methods exists. What behavioral methods do offer, however, is a systematic format for both problem intervention and evaluation that, over time, should produce a more empirically based practice. A promising sign, well documented in the present effort, is the facility with which this book has subjected practice procedures to the rigor of research and evaluation.This blending of clinical practice and research develops the sense of competence that student-practitioners acquire in understanding and controlling both the art and science of their clinical practice. Steven Schinke and his colleagues offer a series of "snapshots" of important work in process. Their collective portrait provides a fresh perspective and new stimulus for all social work practice, as well as an affirmation that disciplined, responsive, and sensitive social work intervention can make a difference in the lives of people.