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Knowledge4Policy
Knowledge for policy
Supporting policy with scientific evidence

We mobilise people and resources to create, curate, make sense of and use knowledge to inform policymaking across Europe.

  • Publication | 2026
Climate stressors and rural incomes: Multi-country evidence on wealth, gender, and age disparities
Global Food and Nutrition Security

This FAO–World Bank–IFPRI study draws on the Rural Livelihoods Information System (RuLIS) rural household surveys from 24 low- and middle-income countries (109,279 rural households) combined with 70 years of climate data to quantify how climate stressors translate into unequal income losses across different social groups defined by different their gender, wealth levels and ages.

Every day of extreme heat is associated with a reduction of the total income of poor and female-headed households by between 0.8 and 1.5 per cent, respectively, relative to non-poor and male-headed households. Most striking: a 1°C rise in long-run temperatures is associated with female-headed households losing 37% more total income than male-headed ones. For female-headed and poor households, reducing vulnerability to climate stressors requires integrated strategies: ameliorating the short-term impacts of extreme weather, building agricultural resilience, and adapting to long-run stressors through income diversification. Shock-responsive social protection such as rapid cash and resources delivered around extreme weather events helps sustain consumption and avoid negative coping strategies, but coverage in low- and middle-income countries remains very low. At farm level, climate-resilient practices and technologies face resource, knowledge, and risk-related constraints, compounded for women by discriminatory gendered norms limiting their control over resources, training, institutions, and time.