The Welfare Research Program at ISDC focuses on the intersection between humanitarian emergencies, fragility, and conflict on one hand and economic and nutritional well being on the other. Food and nutritional security remains one of the main challenges hindering the achievement of zero hunger. It is becoming increasingly clear that countries that are affected by multiple shocks (including climatic, economic, and conflict-related) have the highest share of households who suffer from chronic malnutrition and food insecurity.
We build on the state of the art approaches in designing studies both experimentally and quasi-experimentally to understand how households cope with shocks. This informs our understanding of how humanitarian and development programs can help alleviate vulnerable households from poverty and strengthen their resilience and food and nutritional security. We embed our research design within existing programs and take into account contextual elements to understand and disentangle the mechanisms and pathways of this relationship.
Our research relies on our collection of primary households survey data and use of other publicly available secondary data sources, which sometimes include large data. Applying both qualitative and quantitative methods, including machine learning, we strive to produce findings and lessons that feed back into local and national programs, as well as recommendations that are relevant for global policymakers, practitioners, and stakeholders that can be applied in similar settings.
