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on Development |
| By: | Daum, Thomas; Capezzone, Filippo; Birner, Regina |
| Abstract: | In the quest to reduce global under- and malnutrition, which is particularly high among smallholder farmers, agriculture-nutrition linkages have received a lot of attention in recent years. Researchers have analysed the link between the quantity of food that farmers produce and nutritional outcomes and the link between farm diversity and consumption diversity. A third agriculture-nutrition link has been largely neglected in recent years: the impact of how food is produced on human energy requirements, and, consequently, nutritional outcomes. This neglect persists despite the fact that the majority of smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa rely on hand tools for farming, which implies heavy physical work and, thus, high energy requirements. To address this research gap, the present study compares the energy requirements of farm households in rural Zambia that are characterized by three different levels of mechanization: hand tools, animal draught power and tractors. Detailed time-use as well as food and nutrition data was collected from male and female adults and from children during different seasons: land preparation, weeding and harvesting/processing. Subjects recorded time-use themselves using an innovative picture-based smartphone app called “Timetracker”. The time-use data served to calculate daily energy requirements using “Ainsworth’s Compendium of Physical Activities”. To analyse the link between mechanization and energy use as well as nutritional outcomes, linear mixed models and multiple linear regressions were used. The results show that during land preparation, individuals in non-mechanized households are, on the average, not able to meet their dietary energy requirements. In subsequent farming periods, results are more mixed. Gender differences are noteworthy throughout, with men mostly having higher physical activity levels and energy requirements compared to women The findings suggest that farm technologies affect nutritional outcomes substantially and that this neglected agriculture-nutrition linkage deserves more scientific and political attention in order to reduce the prevalence of both under- and malnutrition among smallholder farmers, while safeguarding against emerging double burden of nutrition. |
| Keywords: | Farm Management, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Labor and Human Capital, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies |
| Date: | 2019–08–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:ubonwp:292230&r=all |
| By: | Kaelab K. Haile; Eleonora Nillesen; Nyasha Tirivayi |
| Abstract: | This study examines the effect of smallholder farmers’ access to a formal climate risk transfer mechanism on their risk preferences. Survey and experimental data were collected from smallholder farmers that have access to weather index-based crop insurance (WICI) in Ethiopia. We use an endogenous switching (ESP) model to address self-selection and simultaneity bias. Results from the ESP model show that farmers who purchased WICI are less likely to be risk-averse compared with non-purchaser farmers. Similarly, non-purchasers would have attained a significant reduction in their risk-aversion if they had taken up the insurance product. We also find that WICI has a positive and statistically significant effect on farmers’ real-life risk-taking behavior as exemplified by mineral fertilizer use. The implication of our findings is that formal climate risk transfer mechanisms can positively influence households’ economic decisions and outcomes, through reducing risk aversion. Therefore, they can possibly contribute to poverty alleviation and economic development within agrarian economies that are exposed to recurrent and severe climate shocks. |
| Keywords: | weather index-based crop insurance, endogenous preferences, experimental risk elicitation, endogenous switching probit, sub-Saharan, Ethiopia |
| JEL: | C91 D03 I38 N27 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_7717&r=all |
| By: | Sarah Khan; Stephan Klasen |
| Abstract: | This study explores how domestic violence and female employment interact and impact female economic empowerment in developing economies. Using micro data data from 35 countries (Central Africa, West Africa, East Africa, South Asia, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia, Middle East & North Africa, and Latin America), the effect of women’s employment on reported domestic violence is estimated. An instrumental Variables technique is used to correct for the potential endogeneity of women’s employment, which might bias the relationship between employment and domestic violence. The study also attempts to do an in-depth analyses on the linkage between types of domestic violence and break down results by region. Without taking endogeneity into account, the estimation suggests that most woman’s employment increases violence by her spouse, while formal sector work reduces it. After controlling for endogeneity, the results are confirmed for the full sample. Breaking down the estimation by region and controlling for endogeneity shows, however, that women’s employment decreases domestic violence in most regions except Latin America and East Africa. Differentiating by employment type shows that women working in agricultural occupations experience more marital abuse. |
| Keywords: | Domestic violence; Female Employment; Developing countries |
| JEL: | J16 J21 |
| Date: | 2018–07–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:got:gotcrc:249&r=all |
| By: | Denisard Alves; Paula Pereda |
| Abstract: | The world’s population will rise exponentially in the coming decades, increasing the demand for food and challenging the agricultural sector to ensure food security. Due to the importance of climate conditions for agriculture, this article analyzed two different hypotheses regarding climate impacts on agricultural markets in Brazil. First, farmers only observe the average climate conditions of their region when deciding the type and amount of crop or animal to grow or raise. Second, weather diversions from normal climate conditions cause farmers to deviate from optimal profits. Neither hypothesis was rejected by the data. The 2006 estimated loss from rainfall anomalies was 12.8 billion dollars (in 2014 values). |
| Keywords: | translog profit function; climate change; climate and weather impacts; profit frontier; agricultural economics. |
| JEL: | D21 Q11 Q12 Q54 Q56 |
| Date: | 2019–07–29 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:spa:wpaper:2019wpecon23&r=all |
| By: | Debosree Banerjee; Stephan Klasen |
| Abstract: | Women’s empowerment is increasingly put forth as a mean to promote child development. However, little empirical research has evaluated the pathways of women empowerment leading to it. This paper uses a household survey conducted in Karnataka, South India to explore the impact of female status on child anthropometric indicators aged below 11 years when food price shock occurs. We distinguish between exogenous status and endogenous status of women and argue that both are important to capture intrahousehold dimensions of women’s empowerment. Endogenous status in our study is measured by mothers’ work status and her time spent with children. Exogenous status is captured by a composite index constructed with parental educational gap, mother’s age at marriage and years of marriage. Our finding suggests that endogenous status, measured by time reduces incidence of underweight, wasting and improves BMI significantly, but it is insignificant to affect weight for age scores. In the case of weight for age scores exogenous status becomes a significant determinant. Similarly, work which is another proxy for endogenous status has a positive impact on BMI and helps reducing incidence of wasting, but when considered together with time and exogenous status the significance vanishes. Time still remains significant to impact BMI, underweight and wasting. We therefore conclude that mothers’ status, measured by time is more important to improve child nutritional status. Finally, our result suggests that the joint effect of time and exogenous variables are particularly crucial to improve child nutrition in households that are affected by a shock. |
| Keywords: | Mothers’ time and work; Child nutrition; Food price shock |
| JEL: | I12 J13 J22 J13 |
| Date: | 2018–08–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:got:gotcrc:251&r=all |
| By: | Sudipa Sarkar; Soham Sahoo; Stephan Klasen |
| Abstract: | This study analyses employment transitions of working-age women in India. The puzzling issue of low labour force participation despite substantial economic growth, strong fertility decline and expanding female education in India has been studied in the recent literature. However, no study so far has looked into the dynamics of employment in terms of labour force entry and exit in this context. Using a nationally representative panel dataset, we show that women are not only participating less in the labour force, but also dropping out at an alarming rate. We estimate an endogenous switching model that corrects for selection bias due to initial employment and panel attrition, to investigate the determinants of women’s entry into and exit from employment. We find that an increase in income of other members of the household leads to lower entry and higher exit probabilities of women. This income effect persists even after controlling for the dynamics of asset holding of the household. Along with the effects of caste and religion, this result reveals the importance of cultural and economic factors in explaining the declining workforce participation of women in India. We also explore other individual and household level determinants of women’s employment transitions. Moreover, we find that a large public workfare program significantly reduces women’s exit from the labour force. |
| Keywords: | Female labour force participation; Employment transition; Panel data; Sample selection; Attrition; India |
| JEL: | J21 J16 O15 |
| Date: | 2017–10–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:got:gotcrc:239&r=all |
| By: | Stephan Klasen; Janneke Pieters; Manuel Santos Silva; Le Thi Ngoc Tu |
| Abstract: | We investigate the micro-level determinants of labor force participation of urban married women in eight low- and middle-income economies: Bolivia, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Jordan, South Africa, Tanzania, and Vietnam. In order to understand what drives changes and differences in participation rates since the early 2000s, we build a unified empirical framework that allows for comparative analyses across time and space. We find that the coefficients of women’s characteristics differ substantially across countries, and this explains most of the between-country differences in participation rates. In particular, the relationship between a woman’s education and her participation in the labor force varies from being positive and linear (Brazil and South Africa) to being U- or J-shaped (India, Jordan, and Indonesia), or a mixture of both (Bolivia, Vietnam, and Tanzania). Overall, the economic, social, and institutional constraints that shape women’s labor force participation remain largely country-specific. Nonetheless, rising education levels and declining fertility consistently increased participation rates, while rising household incomes contributed negatively in relatively poorer countries, suggesting that a substantial share of women work out of economic necessity. |
| Keywords: | female labor force participation; gender; labor markets; development |
| JEL: | J20 J16 I25 O15 |
| Date: | 2018–08–19 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:got:gotcrc:253&r=all |
| By: | Fetzer, Thiemo (University of Warwick) |
| Abstract: | Can public interventions persistently reduce conflict? Adverse weather shocks, through their impact on incomes, have been identified as robust drivers of conflict in many contexts. An effective social insurance system moderates the impact of adverse shocks on house hold incomes, and hence,could attenuate the link between these shocks and conflict. This paper shows that a public employment program in India, by providing an alternative source of income through a guarantee of 100 days of employment at minimum wages, effectively provides insurance. This has an indirect pacifying effect. By weakening the link between productivity shocks and incomes, the program uncouples productivity shocks from conflict, leading persistently lower conflict levels |
| Keywords: | social insurance ; civil conflict ; India ; NREGA ; insurgency |
| JEL: | D74 H56 J65 Q34 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wrk:warwec:1220&r=all |
| By: | Chiara, De Gasperin; Valentina, Rotondi; Luca, Stanca |
| Abstract: | Mobile money can play an important role in improving financial inclusion and, as a consequence, employment outcomes, especially in areas where adequate financial infrastructures are lacking. In this paper, we study the effects of mobile money use on the employment outcomes of individuals in 8 developing countries. Our findings indicate that, relative to non-users, individuals who use mobile money are more likely to become self-employed and to receive a regular wage. In particular, the positive association between mobile money use and regular wage is found to be robust also when explicitly addressing the potential endogeneity of mobile mobile money. Overall, the evidence suggests that policies aimed at favoring access to and use of mobile money can provide an e ective and relatively inexpensive tool in the agenda for sustainable development. |
| Keywords: | Mobile Money, Digital Revolution, Labor Market. |
| JEL: | O16 O17 O33 |
| Date: | 2019–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mib:wpaper:403&r=all |
| By: | Fishman, Ram (Tel Aviv University); Smith, Stephen C. (George Washington University); Bobic, Vida (George Washington University); Sulaiman, Munshi (Save the Children) |
| Abstract: | Many development programs are short-term interventions, either because of external funding constraints or an assumption of impact sustainability. Using a novel randomized phaseout research method, we provide experimental tests of phaseout effects of an extension program designed for women smallholder farmers in Uganda. We find that program phaseout does not diminish demand for improved seeds, as farmers shift purchases from NGO-sponsored village supply networks to market sources, indicating persistent learning effects. We find no evidence of declines in improved cultivation practices taught by the program. These results have implications for both efficient program design and for models of technology adoption. |
| Keywords: | agricultural extension, agricultural technology adoption, food security, supply chain, subsidies, randomized phaseout, high-yielding varieties, randomized controlled trial, Uganda |
| JEL: | O13 O33 I32 Q12 |
| Date: | 2019–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12476&r=all |
| By: | Nadezhda V. Baryshnikova (School of Economics, University of Adelaide); Ngoc T. A. Pham (School of Architecture and Built Environment, University of Adelaide); Nicholas C. S. Sim (Singapore University of Social Sciences) |
| Abstract: | Reducing child marriage is seen as one of the essentials to women’s empowerment and wellbeing, ending the intergenerational cycle of poverty and rights violation. In this paper, we use a longitudinal household survey from Indonesia to study whether a food subsidy (Raskin) reduces child marriage. Modelling treatment assignment with Coarsened Exact Matching and Differences-in-Differences, we show that the unconditional rice subsidy significantly reduces the likelihood of marrying as a child. |
| Keywords: | Child marriage, Food subsidy, Raskin, Indonesia, Coarsened exact matching, Diffs-in-Diffs |
| JEL: | J82 I21 I38 |
| Date: | 2019–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:adl:wpaper:2019-05&r=all |
| By: | Perez-Alvarez, Marcello (University of Göttingen); Favara, Marta (University of Oxford) |
| Abstract: | Early motherhood remains a widespread phenomenon in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). While the consequences of early motherhood for the mother have been extensively investigated, the impact on their children is severely understudied, especially in LMICs, which host 95% of teen births globally (WHO, 2014). Using panel and sibling data from India, this paper investigates the effect of early maternal age on offspring human capital development in terms of health and cognition, and relies on mother fixed effects to allow for household and mother unobserved heterogeneity. Furthermore, this paper explores the evolution of these effects over time during childhood and early adolescence for the first time. Results indicate that early maternal age has an overall detrimental effect on offspring health and cognition. We show that children born to early mothers are shorter for their age and perform poorer in the math test. Interestingly, the effect on child's heath is observed at early ages and weakens over time, while the cognition effect surges only in early adolescence. The analysis on heterogeneous effects suggests that children and in particular girls born to very young mothers are worst off. The transmission channel analysis tentatively hints at some behavioral channels driving the relationships of interest and documents a positive (and modest) association between height-for-age and subsequent math performance. Overall, our results support both restorative policies assisting children born to early mothers and preventive policies tackling early pregnancy. |
| Keywords: | adolescent motherhood, human capital, child development, cognition, health, nutrition, gender, parenting |
| JEL: | I15 I25 J13 J16 O15 |
| Date: | 2019–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12489&r=all |
| By: | Bruno Palialol; Paula Pereda |
| Abstract: | Programa de Alimentação dos Trabalhadores (PAT) creates tax incentives for firms to provide 20 million workers with in-kind transfers in Brazil. Economic theory supports they are distortive when compared to cash transfers but this is not clear when the latter are subject to payroll taxes. Using a propensity score analysis we find evidence that PAT increases poor households food consumption between 15.7% and 25.0% and deadweight loss associated with distortions reach US$63.1 (R$150.1) million. Overconsumption, however, may not be increasing worker’s nutrition, as aimed by the program. |
| Keywords: | In-kind transfers vs cash transfers; Programa de Alimentação dos Trabalhadores (PAT); Propensity score analysis. |
| JEL: | D11 D12 I38 |
| Date: | 2019–07–29 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:spa:wpaper:2019wpecon26&r=all |
| By: | Gelo, Dambala (University of Johannesburg); Muchapondwa, Edwin (University of Cape Town); Shimeles, Abebe (African Development Bank); Dikgang, Johane (University of Johannesburg) |
| Abstract: | This paper evaluates the impact of the Purchase 4 Progress (P4P) intervention implemented by World Food Program in Ethiopia on per capita income as well as across sub-social groups. The intervention is intended to improve the market power of smallholder farmers through cooperatives that has the potential to increase the relative farm gate price of agricultural produce, particularly staple crops. Using a semi-parametric difference-in-difference (DID) model, which relaxes the parallel trend assumption, we show that the P4P intervention has raised per capita consumption of smallholders. Estimates of the treatment effect from alternative specifications of our preferred models ranged between Ethiopian Birr (ETB) 188.3 and ETB 248.6 (15.10% and 19.93%). Moreover, our analysis suggests heterogeneous treatment effects related to elite capture within Farmer Organizations. Policy implications are discussed. |
| Keywords: | P4P, welfare effect, distributional bias, semi-parametric DID |
| JEL: | D23 Q02 D02 |
| Date: | 2019–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12495&r=all |