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This paper reviews the prospects for long-term food security in Asia, where a significant number of malnourished individuals still live after decades of mixed progress. Evidence shows that poverty reduction on its own will not do the job of eradicating hunger, nor will only increased food production. The region's contribution to high and volatile international food prices is well known, but Asia's potential contributions toward future decreased price uncertainty are much less cited. The changing composition of future food demand in the region will depend on the extent to which poverty reduction effectively leads to middle class expansion, which remains unclear.

Food & Beverage Industry --- Food security --- Hunger --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Middle class --- Nutrition --- Population Policies --- Poverty --- Poverty Reduction --- Regional Economic Developments --- Rural Poverty Reduction --- Asia

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This paper identifies and quantifies three distortions caused by the existing social security and social assistance systems in Colombia. These distortions refer to the discrepancy between the cost of formal social security for the employer and the worker's valuation of the received service (social distortion): the differences in social security benefits received by salaried and self-employed formal workers (occupational distortion); and the discrepancy caused by the cost in employing a formal instead of an informal worker (informal distortion). Based on recently collected information concerning Colombian workers' willingness to pay for several packages of social security benefits, the study calculates that social distortions range from 2 to 27 percent of the workers' labor earnings; the occupational distortion amounts to 50 percent of formal salaried workers' earnings; and the informal distortions represent between 45 and 56 percent of formal workers' labor income. Results indicate that valuations of the contributive and noncontributive protection systems play a key role in explaining these distortions. In addition, the Colombian social protection system thereby places a hefty tax on the formal worker (and employer) while transferring resources to the informal worker, but these distortions are not sufficient to revert differentials in earnings among formal and informal workers.

Disabilities --- Dismissal --- Environmental disasters --- Families --- Health care --- Health Monitoring & Evaluation --- Health, Nutrition and Population --- Injuries --- Labor costs --- Labor market --- Labor Markets --- Labor Policies --- Labor Standards --- Living conditions --- Migration --- Mortality --- Population Policies --- Public health --- Quality of life --- Salaried workers --- Social policy --- Social Protections and Labor --- Social support --- Unemployed people --- Unemployment --- Worker --- Workers

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This paper quantifies the magnitude of transitions across occupational categories in Colombia, a country with high unemployment and informality but quickly increasing its social security coverage for health. The analysis makes use of a panel of households between 2008 and 2009, representative of the main metropolitan areas in the country. Results confirm previous evidence found in Colombia and elsewhere in the region that transitions between occupations are large and asymmetric: they are disproportionally more likely to happen from formal to informal occupations than vice versa. The paper finds for the first time that such transitions are also different for salaried workers compared with the self-employed, as well as by poverty status of the worker. Salaried workers are more likely to transition first into other salaried jobs, while self-employed are more likely to transition into unemployment or out of the labor force. There are marked differences in the profiles of transitioning and non-transitioning workers, both in terms of socioeconomic characteristics and social security coverage. Causal analysis shows that affiliation to social security on health deters occupational transitions, while pension insurance does not. Hence, high-volume transitions may not be crisis-specific phenomena, but rather associated with contributive and non-contributive social security mechanisms that incentivize informality, and workers' preferences for informal jobs. The debate on labor market and social security reforms needs to take these features of transitions into account.

Asymmetries --- Communities & Human Settlements --- Crisis --- Informality --- Labor Market --- Labor Markets --- Labor Policies --- Labor Standards --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Population Policies --- Poverty Reduction --- Transitions --- Work & Working Conditions --- Colombia

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