The Impact of Developed Country Agricultural Trade Liberalization on Poverty: A Survey

There has been growing criticism of agricultural policies in developed countries because of the way they are believed to undermine the ability of developing countries to reduce the numbers living in poverty. Developed countries have accepted to support developing countries to reach the Millennium Development Goal target of halving poverty by 2015. The desire for greater policy coherence with this stated development objective has been one of the factors behind efforts to reform developed country agricultural policies. This paper provides a survey of the limited empirical literature which tries to go beyond the estimation of national-level welfare effects on developing countries of developed country agricultural trade liberalization to estimate the effects on numbers in poverty. We find a relatively limited empirical contribution to this issue despite its policy relevance. The small number of studies from which inferences can be drawn tends to show a positive impact on poverty alleviation. However, the literature draws attention to the specificity of the country estimates and highlights a number of country characteristics which will influence the poverty impacts of external shocks arising from developed country agricultural trade liberalization.