the microfinance promise in the past decade microfinance programs have demonstrated that it is possible to lend to low income households while maintaining high repayment rates even without requiring collateral the programs promise a revolution in approaches to alleviating poverty and spreading financial services and millions of poor households are served globally a growing body of economic theory demonstrates how new contractual forms offer a key to microfinance success particularly the use of group lending contracts with joint liability for the most part however high repayment rates have not translated into profits and studies of impacts on poverty yield a mixed picture in describing emerging tensions the paper highlights the diversity of innovative mechanisms beyond group lending contracts the measurement of financial sustainability the estimation of economic and social impacts the costs and benefits of subsidization and the potential to reduce poverty through savings programs rather than just credit the promise of microfinance has pushed far ahead of the evidence and an agenda is put forward for addressing critical empirical gaps and sharpening the terms of policy discussion

rural nonfarm employment and incomes in latin america overview and policy implications abstract rural nonfarm employment rnfe and incomes rnfi are crucial to latin american rural households the 11 rural household income studies in this volume reviewed in this paper use 1990s data and show that rnfi averages 40 of rural incomes rnfi and rnfe have grown quickly over the past three decades the review of evidence provided some surprising departures from traditional images of nonfarm activities of latin american rural households in terms of shares of rural incomes 1 nonfarm wage incomes exceed self employment incomes 2 rnfi far exceeds farm wage incomes 3 local rnfi far exceeds migration incomes 4 service sector rnfi far exceeds manufactures rnfi these findings suggest the need for more development program attention to wage employment in the service sector versus the traditional focus on small enterprise manufactures moreover poor households and zones tend to have higher shares in their incomes but lower absolute levels of rnfi as compared to richer households and zones the rnfe of the poor tend to be the low paid nonfarm equivalent of semi subsistence farming raising the capacity of the poor to participate in the better paid types of rnfe is crucial via employment skills training education infrastructure credit finally rnfe has grown fastest and been most poverty alleviating where there are dynamic growth motors in particular in the agricultural sector but also in tourism links to urban areas mining and forestry this means that developing rnf jobs cannot be done at the expense of programs promoting agricultural development

rural income dynamics and poverty reduction in thai villages from 1987 to 2004 this article aims to examine the factors contributing to the increase in household income and the corresponding reduction in poverty in rural thai villages from 1987 to 2004 by employing household panel data it is found that there has been a significant structural shift of household income away from farm to nonfarm income sources as well as a reduction in the income gap and the difference in poverty incidence between favorable and unfavorable regions such decreases in poverty and its regional gap have been associated with the declining importance of income accrued to farm land measured by farm size and the availability of irrigation and with the increasing importance of human capital measured by the proportion of working members who have graduated from post lower secondary schools such findings indicate that the success in rural poverty reduction in thailand has resulted from the development of the rural nonfarm sector coupled with the improvement of the schooling levels of the rural population

nonfarm employment and poverty in rural el salvador abstract this paper analyzes two complementary data sets to study poverty and the nonfarm sector in rural el salvador we find that rural poverty in el salvador remains acute and significantly higher than in urban areas while the rural poor are mainly agricultural laborers and marginal farmers some nonfarm activities are also of importance to the poor in fact nonfarm activities in el salvador account for a significant share of rural employment and income for both the poor and the nonpoor the poor on the one hand are engaged in last resort nonfarm activities that are not associated with high levels of labor productivity the nonpoor on the other are engaged in productive nonfarm activities which are likely to present a potent force for upward mobility significant correlates of these high productivity occupations include education infrastructure location and gender while most of the analysis is at the household level the data also permit some focus on small scale rural enterprise activities it appears that in el salvador very few rural enterprises report utilizing formal credit in setting up their activities in addition a significant proportion of enterprises are engaged in subcontracting arrangements with some larger often urban based firm

intersectoral transfer growth and inequality in rural ecuador abstract in this paper we study intersectoral transfer and its impact on the distribution of income in ecuador we find that income shares between farm and nonfarm activities are roughly equal on average although the rich in rural areas typically receive a greater share of income from nonfarm sources thus decomposing inequality by income source reveals that a rise in nonfarm incomes increases inequality drawing on a new method to estimate local level distributional outcomes growth of the high productivity nonfarm sector is observed to have a strong and positive association with average consumption and inequality growth of the low productivity nonfarm sector is associated with little change in either average income or income inequality irrespective of subsector growth of the nonfarm sector is associated with a substantial fall in poverty

interrogating inclusive growth formal informal duality complementarity conflict i find through analyses of across state across industry over state and pooled data involving state and time on the indian economy that the behaviour of the urban informal unorganised sector is explained by the modern formal organised sector besides petty agriculture but the vast rural informal sector is like surplus population associated only with petty agriculture i also show there could be interactions between the formal sector and modern agriculture these empirical relations are analysed and theoretical departures from the literature are identified i propose using a structuralist kaleckian framework with accumulation in the formal sector a large part of petty agriculture is modernised or converted to suit the needs of accumulation and thereby we have a long run drain of resources from petty agriculture and hence from informal sectors as well however even under such a resource drain the urban informal sector may sustain or expand due to productivity advantages and due to pull from the formal sector at the cost of its rural counterpart in the short run when the formal sector and hence the urban informal sector expand or when the government promotes the urban or productive part of informal economy a basic conflict between urban and rural informal sectors is exposed given the generic agricultural supply constraint thus the paradigms of inclusive growth and development management are questioned copyright oxford university press

entrepreneurship selection and performance a meta analysis of the impact of education in developing economies this meta analytical review of empirical studies of the impact of schooling on entrepreneurship in selection and performance in developing economies looks at variations impact across specific characteristics of the studies a marginal year of schooling in developing economies raises enterprise income by an average of 5 5 percent which is close to the average return in industrial countries the return varies however by gender rural or urban residence and the share of agriculture in the economy furthermore more educated workers typically end up in wage employment and prefer nonfarm entrepreneurship to farming the education effect that separates workers into self employment and wage employment is stronger for women possibly stronger in urban areas and also stronger in the least developed economies where agriculture is more dominant and literacy rates are lower

a cross country comparison of rural income generating activities summary this paper uses a newly constructed cross country database composed of comparable income aggregates to examine the full range of income generating activities carried out by rural households the analysis paints a clear picture of multiple activities across rural space in countries on all four continents though less so in the included african countries for most countries the largest share of income stems from off farm activities and the largest share of households has diversified sources of income diversification not specialization is the norm nevertheless agricultural sources of income remain critically important for rural livelihoods in all countries

agricultural productivity and the sectoral reallocation of labor in rural india abstract how do shocks to agricultural productivity affect the allocation of labor across sectors of the economy to answer this i use data from rural india to show that exogenous increases in agricultural productivity caused by abnormally high levels of precipitation lead to an increase in the labor share of the non agricultural sector i further show that the non tradable sector expands significantly when agricultural output increases this evidence is consistent with increasing agricultural output causing increased demand for local non tradables which in turn increases the non agricultural labor share

of contracts and subcontracts small firms in vertically dis integrated production distribution systems in ldcs abstract the increasing complexity in production and distribution which accompanies development provides opportunities for small firms to participate by undertaking a limited range of activities in vertically dis integrated systems through subcontracting arrangements in addition to reducing costs in particular activities this facilitates the growth of production and distribution systems which are more complex than one integrated firm could manage or finance on its own for this pattern to work though contracting difficulties arising from market imperfections must be overcome alternative ways used by third world firms to solve these coordination problems are identified and policy implications suggested

regional growth linkages from agriculture pioneering research on downstream linkages from agriculture is said to demonstrate that consumption links rather than production links are the main source of indrect growth effects that these consumption links take the form of labour intensive goods and services produced locally and that the largest farm enterprises are most locally multiplicative of activities mopping up surplus rural labour this article has two purposes first the methodologies assumptions and data base for the quantification of the local and non local regional multiplier effects from agricultural development are examined second the contradictory interpretations for agricultural policy which have arisen from these exercises of quantification are discussed and an attempt made to explain their bases

agroclimatic shock income inequality and poverty evidence from burkina faso abstract this paper examines the impacts of agroclimatic shock on income inequality and poverty using household farm data from three agroecological zones of burkina faso together with income source decompositions of the gini coefficient and the foster greer thorbecke poverty index before and after a severe drought our findings reveal that because the poor lack acces to off farm income off farm income increases inequality and fails to shield poor households against agroclimatic risks the direction of the empirical relationship between changes in inequality and poverty after the drought depends critically on environmental variables and on apparent constraints on income diversification at different points in the income distribution

rural to urban migration human capital and agglomeration a new general equilibrium model that links together rural to urban migration the externality effect of the average level of human capital and agglomeration economies shows that in developing countries unrestricted rural to urban migration reduces the average income of both rural and urban dwellers in equilibrium various measures aimed at curtailing rural to urban migration by unskilled workers can lead to a pareto improvement for both the urban and rural dwellers in addition the government can raise social welfare by reducing the migration of skilled workers to the city moreover without a restriction on rural to urban migration a government s efforts to increase educational expenditure and thereby the number of skilled workers may not increase wage rates in the rural or urban areas

using evidence of household income diversification to inform study of the rural nonfarm labor market in africa abstract the labor market literature in developing countries has seldom drawn on the studies of rural household income diversification this paper draws on such studies to inform future study of the rural nonfarm labor market in africa the review of evidence provides some surprising departures from traditional images of nonfarm activities of rural households among the most striking is the dominant importance in the majority of case study areas of nonfarm wage labor as compared to self employment of nonfarm sector earnings as compared to farm sector wage earnings and of local nonfarm earnings as compared to migration earnings the most worrying finding was the poor distribution of nonfarm earnings in rural areas despite the importance of these earnings to food security and farm investments this poor distribution implies significant entry barriers and market segmentation it is probable that this will lead over time to an increasingly skewed distribution of land and other assets in rural africa

gender and rural non farm entrepreneurship despite their increasing prominence in policy debates little is known about gender inequities in non agricultural labor market outcomes in rural areas using matched household enterprise community data sets from bangladesh ethiopia indonesia and sri lanka this paper documents and analyzes gender differences in the individual portfolio choice and productivity of non farm entrepreneurship except for ethiopia women are less likely than men to become nonfarm entrepreneurs women s nonfarm entrepreneurship isn t strongly correlated with household composition or educational attainment but is especially prevalent amongst women who are the head of their household female led firms are much smaller and less productive on average though gender differences in productivity vary dramatically across countries mean differences in log output per worker suggest that male firms are roughly 10 times as productive as female firms in bangladesh three times as those in ethiopia and twice as those in sri lanka by contrast no significant differences in labor productivity were detected in indonesia differences in output per worker are overwhelmingly accounted for by sorting by sector and size they can t be explained by differences in capital intensity human capital or the local investment climate nor by increasing returns to scale

an evaluation of the importance of subsistence food production for assessments of poverty and policy targeting evidence from romania a representative survey of romanian households highlights the importance of subsistence food production to consumer welfare estimates of the incidence of poverty are sensitive to the valuation of subsistence production particularly for certain sub groups the characteristics of those engaged in subsistence food production are profiled and sub groups identified using a combination of factor and cluster analysis the factor analysis identifies three dimensions of indicators to characterise households rurality financial resources and time dedicated to main activity based on these factors four clusters of romanian households are identified the two poorest groups are the most rural and dependent on subsistence production and the assessment of the latter s value is most important to these groups in terms the numbers classified as poor poverty alleviation strategies for each sub group are discussed

explaining micro entrepreneurship in rural vietnam a multilevel analysis in the literature on entrepreneurship there is an ongoing debate about the impact of regional factors on the entrepreneurial process to date most of the empirical work on the influence of regional characteristics on entrepreneurship has focused on developed countries while empirical work that analyses the regional determinants of micro entrepreneurship in rural areas of emerging markets remains scare this paper uses three level binary logistic random intercept models to analyse the effects of explanatory factors at different levels on micro entrepreneurship in rural vietnam our analyses show that identifying the motivation behind starting a micro enterprise is a good way to split entrepreneurship into two groups namely opportunity and necessity driven entrepreneurship which are influenced by very different explanatory factors at different levels we find evidence that in rural areas of emerging markets the individual level dominates with regard to explaining both opportunity and necessity driven entrepreneurship nevertheless the regional level has a significant impact albeit only on opportunity driven entrepreneurship

a virtuous circle model of rural urban development evidence from a kenyan small town and its hinterland using data from kenya this article explores several propositions of a virtuous circle model of rural urban development to determine when the model might operate within a local economy it is shown that the cycle of reinforcing linkages hinges on a vigorous export base external demand is only effective when farmers are connected to markets small towns help raise agricultural productivity by allowing farmers to spread risk by diversifying incomes vibrant agriculture spurs the proliferation of local non farm activities which in turn create demand for farm produce though not necessarily from the same area and finally the virtuous circle model can be undermined by inappropriate macroeconomic policies

regional labor market integration shadow wages and poverty in vietnam poor workers suffer from low returns to their most abundant resource labor in this paper we show that labor market integration strongly affects these returns for poor workers in vietnam using seven representative household surveys it is shown that while regional labor markets have become increasingly integrated over the period 1993 2010 considering market wages of workers in wage employment there remains a strong lack of integration considering shadow wages of workers in farm self employment shadow wages have been increasing as a proportion of market wages during 1993 2010 but they remain only 22 28 of rural market wages by 2010 using a decomposition technique it is shown that the lack of integration between the farm self employment segment with various segments of wage employment regional urban versus rural non farm household versus other enterprises explains primarily the gap in returns to labor between poor and non poor workers these findings show that labor market integration studies should not only focus on observed market wages but also on shadow wages in order to understand the relationship between labor market integration and the returns to labor

does the nonfarm economy offer pathways for upward mobility evidence from a panel data study in ethiopia summary empirical studies across many developing countries routinely document a positive correlation between participation in rural nonfarm employment and households wealth or income this paper explores whether nonfarm employment leads to higher consumption expenditure growth in ethiopia we find that 1 households consumption expenditure growth is positively correlated with the initial share of nonfarm income 2 the growth elasticity of nonfarm income share is higher for wealthier households and 3 the main source of growth for nonfarm participants comes from the higher rates of return participants enjoy on their human and physical capital

rural nonfarm employment and incomes in the himalayas abstract nonfarm activities generate on average about 60 of rural households incomes in the himalayas this article analyzes the determinants of participation in nonfarm activities and of nonfarm incomes across rural households a unique data set collected in the himalayan region of india allows us to deal with the heterogeneity of rural nonfarm activities by using aggregations into categories that are useful both analytically and for policy purposes we conduct an empirical inquiry that reveals that education plays a major role in accessing more remunerative nonfarm employment other household assets and characteristics such as land social status and geographical location also play a role

the rural non farm economy prospects for growth and poverty reduction summary policy makers have high expectations for the rural non farm economy rnfe given high income shares growing employment and frequently low capital requirements they see the rnfe as a potential pathway out of poverty for their rural poor yet available evidence suggests that pro poor rural non farm growth does not occur automatically for the poor to benefit from rural non farm growth policy makers must stimulate buoyant rural economies with robust non farm income growth not simply low productivity employment moreover the poor must gain access to growing market niches fluid labor markets provide one important bridge linking the rural poor to growing non farm opportunities

coordinating development can income based incentive schemes eliminate pareto inferior equilibria individuals inability to coordinate investment may significantly constrain economic development in this paper we study a simple investment game characterized by multiple equilibria and ask whether an income based incentive scheme can uniquely implement the high investment outcome a general property of this game is the presence of a crossover investment point at which an individual s incomes from investment and noninvestment are equal we show that arbitrarily small errors in the government s knowledge of this crossover point can prevent unique implementation of the high investment outcome we conclude that informational requirements are likely to severely limit a government s ability to use income based incentive schemes as a coordination device

transformation of the rural economy in the philippines 1988 2006 abstract this research explores the changing structure of the rural economy in the philippines from 1988 to 2006 we found that the expansion and upgrade of infrastructure such as electricity and roads and investment in secondary and tertiary education are important factors that induced the economic transformation of the rural economy the importance of higher education as an entry requirement to the nonfarm labor market has declined over time indicating that the rural nonfarm sector has been increasingly providing employment opportunities to the unskilled and the uneducated who form the bulk of the rural poor

is off farm income reforming the farm evidence from mexico does access to off farm income complement or compete with agricultural production this article explores the effect of off farm income on agricultural production activities using data from the 2003 mexico national rural household survey we first discuss the theoretical conditions under which access to off farm income may influence production in an agricultural household model instrumental variable iv estimation methods are then used to test whether agricultural production activities technologies and input use differ between households with and without access to off farm income we find that off farm income has a negative effect on agricultural output and the use of family labor on the farm but a positive impact on the demand for purchased inputs there is also a slight efficiency gain in households with access to off farm income findings offer insights into how household production evolves as rural households increasingly engage in off farm income activities

determinants and effects of income diversification amongst farm households in burkina faso using four years of household data from three agroecological zones in burkina faso sahelian sudanian and guinean the article examines the determinants and effects of household income diversification harvest shortfalls and terms of trade are found to drive diversification but land constraints do not income diversification is associated with higher incomes and food consumption and more stable income and consumption over years

measuring performance in primary care econometric analysis and dea we use data from the health service indicators database to compare different methods of measuring the performance of english family health services authorities fhsas in providing primary care a variety of regression and data envelopment analysis methods are compared as summary efficiency measures of individual fhsa performance the correlation of the rankings of fhsas across dea and regression methods across two years of data and across three different specifications of the technology of primary care are examined efficiency scores are highly correlated within variants of the two methods and across years for a given method inter method correlations are smaller and correlations across different specifications of the primary care production process are negligible and sometime negative

district level economic linkages in kenya evidence based on a small regional social accounting matrix abstract this paper explores the nature and extent of the economic linkages in a small regional economy defined by a market center and its hinterland in kenya the analysis is based on a set of income and employment multipliers derived from a social accounting matrix estimated for the region issues considered include the impact of production activities on regional value added and employment the influence of sectoral production on the level of household income and the impact of household expenditure on regional value added and the relative significance of production and consumption linkages in terms of stimulating aggregate income the above questions are examined under the assumption of complete excess capacity in regional production and under the assumption of supply constraints in agriculture the usefulness of the analysis for district level economic planning is demonstrated

sri lanka s rural non farm economy removing constraints to pro poor growth summary we use a survey of rural enterprises from sri lanka to explore characteristics of the informal non farm sector and identify obstacles to its expansion and productivity value added in this sector amounts to 80 of agricultural gdp participating households incomes are significantly higher than those of households who do not participate barriers to entry are low and the impact of non farm development on inequality modest implying a large potential contribution to growth and poverty reduction infrastructure constraints negatively affect new startups investment in and productivity of existing enterprises with small enterprises being particularly affected

poverty and the rural nonfarm economy in oromia ethiopia the rural nonfarm sector has gained increasing importance not only in asia but also in africa it is however widely believed that in most parts of africa the growth of the nonfarm economy has increased inequality and has had a limited effect on the poor who face entry barriers to nonfarm activities the present article analyzes the relation between nonfarm income poverty and inequality in oromia ethiopia we use two complementary methodologies i econometric estimates of household income from the nonfarm sector and ii a gini decomposition of analysis income inequality by source the results consistently indicate that in oromia entry barriers to nonfarm activities is low and the general growth of the sector will benefit the poor

the rural non farm sector issues and evidence from developing countries abstract the rural non farm sector has traditionally been viewed as a low productivity sector which produces low quality goods it is often expected to wither away as a country develops recent years have seen a shift away from this position towards recognition that the rural non farm sector can and often does contribute to economic growth rural employment poverty reduction and a more spatially balanced population distribution this paper reviews the literature on the conceptual and empirical underpinnings of this more recent perspective focussing on the experience in developing countries the paper documents the size and heterogeneity of the sector pointing to evidence that in many countries the sector is expanding rather than declining the issues associated with measuring the sector s economic contribution are discussed followed by empirical assessments for several countries and regions the distributional impact of non farm earnings is examined and it is found that a pro poor impact while by no means inevitable can be considerable the sector s trajectory over time in different settings is reviewed and the scope for and experience of various policy interventions is discussed

rural urban effects of terminating farm subsidies a rural urban interregional computable general equilibrium cge model is constructed to simulate the effects of terminating farm subsidies on household incomes employment rates farm and non farm sectoral activity regional costs of living and other economic indicators the magnitudes of the effects depend on regional factor and goods market segmentation robust short run implications are that ceasing farm subsidies would cause rural nonfarm particularly household service sector employment to fall and lead to lower household income on the other hand rural manufacturing activity expands and the cost of living falls relative to urban urban employment household income and land rents rise although termination of farm subsidies causes a decline in rural real product the urban real product gain outweighs rural losses

export price shocks and rural labor markets the role of labor market distortions abstract to what extent can workers in developing countries seize gains from trade to answer this question we resort to a unique exogenous labor demand shock triggered by a surge in the world market price of cotton in 2010 11 by capitalizing on tajikistan s geographic variation in the suitability for cotton production we identify the effect of the export price hike on wages of rural workers the shock induces agricultural firms to shift towards labor intensive cotton production the subsequent greater labor demand doubles wages for female cotton pickers on small entrepreneurial private farms but does not affect their wages on large parastatal farms we present evidence that parastatal farms recruit workers for low wages based on monopsony power and expand employment based on labor coercion of children and public sector workers our results highlight the importance of accounting for competitive structures in local labor markets when assessing the wage pass through of world market prices to workers in developing countries

the conundrum of successful credit projects in floundering rural financial markets many governments use credit projects to foster agricultural development and donors spend billions of dollars supporting these activities in low income countries lics most of these activities are justified by the purported impact that loans have on ultimate borrowers for example credit demands filled additional crops produced changes in modern inputs used and borrowers incomes increased most project evaluations report favorable impacts that in turn stimulate donors and governments to spend more money on agricultural credit these favorable evaluations have prompted policymakers to conclude that rural financial markets are strengthened by most credit projects at the same time other researchers have evaluated rural financial markets in countries with successful credit projects and have found mounting problems they report on markets that lose substantial portions of the purchasing power of their loan portfolios to ravages of default or inflation concentrations of cheap loans in the hands of the wealthy political meddling in lending systems that offer few savings opportunities large transaction costs for lenders and borrowers lenders who are addicted to outside funds for their sustenance and credit institutions that sporadically implode or self destruct these reports of healthy parts but infirm wholes present a conundrum how can the major parts of the rural financial system involved in donor and government projects be doing well while the system as a whole is doing poorly are these projects islands of tranquility in otherwise stormy seas or is one of these two approaches to evaluation giving an erroneous picture unfortunately few credit project evaluations are published in journals or books although a large number of these studies have been done typically evaluation results are buried in unpublished reports or in graduate student theses while millions of dollars have been spent

labour income uncertainty taxation and public good provision this article examines optimal nonlinear income taxation commodity taxation and public good provision under income uncertainty in a moral hazard framework uniform commodity taxation and the samuelson rule for public good provision are desirable under similar conditions as in the conventional tax model deviations from these rules is warranted if one can encourage effort by subsidising certain goods and overproviding public goods we also determine a rule for the optimal marginal income tax rate and provide some numerical simulations conditions for the validity of the solution procedure used in this class of models the first order approach are also explored uncertainty is a key component of many important real world decision making processes consider for example an individual s decision to acquire specific skills through education educational investments must be made well before the resolution of uncertainty related to the returns to skill thus the tax system which affects the net returns of different skill levels has a potentially large impact on educational decisions skill attainment and productivity a progressive tax system offers insurance to workers by redistributing income from the lucky to the unlucky other forms of social insurance such as unemployment and health insurance work in a similar manner a well known problem in the design of optimal income tax under uncertainty or any insurance mechanism is asymmetric information between the government and individuals income is partly due to individual effort and partly due to luck but the planner can only observe realised income not effort the optimal redistribution scheme is a balance between providing the workers with adequate incentives to acquire skills and sufficient insurance mirrlees 1974 was the first to examine the design of optimal redistributive income tax under income uncertainty this moral hazard model later used among others by varian 1980 tuomala 1984 and low and maldoom 2004 is an alternative to the more well known adverse selection model of mirrlees 1971 where income dispersion arises from differences in innate skill levels the moral hazard model is perhaps most appealing in the tax context when effort is interpreted as an ex ante decision on educational investment alternatively one can interpret the discussion as a general analysis of social insurance 1 income tax is only one element albeit an important one in the design of optimal government redistributive policy indeed recent optimal tax literature has devoted a lot of attention to the use of other instruments such as commodity taxation minimum

revealing hidden co2 impacts from consequential consumption by matrix analysis application to japanese single households abstract the aim of this study was to develop a novel analytical framework using matrix based analysis to visualize the environmental impacts of consumption by considering the direct and indirect consumption of all the items induced by the initial consumption called consequential consumption in the context of consequential life cycle assessment lca the significance of this framework and the importance of considering consequential consumption have been demonstrated by analyzing the net co 2 emissions due to consumption through a case study of single households in japan the analytical framework includes the following four steps 1 categorization of consumers 2 calculation of a matrix of consequential consumption 3 impact assessment and 4 uncertainty analysis the normalization process plays an essential role in the calculation of a matrix of consequential consumption while meeting the constraint of fixed income the matrix of consequential consumption was obtained by analyzing the latest japanese household expenditure data for 2004 the net co 2 emission from consumption was estimated using the matrix of consequential consumption and the co 2 intensities of products services in japan as a result we found that the consumption of some products services have the potential to increase decrease co 2 emissions beyond their own co 2 intensities because of consequential consumption in spite of their relatively small co 2 intensities several products and services meat dairy products and eggs oils fats and condiments water and sewerage charges domestic nondurable goods have high net co 2 emissions per unit price japanese yen jpy this is because of high co 2 emissions from the consequential consumption of energy in contrast the net co 2 emission from charges for board are negative because of the substitution relationship between food and energy items compared with the results of other foregoing studies on food materials the net co 2 emission by our approach is much larger than that indicated by the conventional process specific approach

links between nonfarm income and farm investment in african households adding the capital market perspective farm household surveys in the 1970s and 1980s showed that nonfarm activities provide an important share of household income contrasting with the conventional image of rural african households as deriving their food entitlement almost exclusively from the land e g matlon collier and lal low reardon et al haggblade hazell and brown much of the literature on nonfarm income has concentrated

a stated preference approach to assessing health care quality improvements in palestine from theoretical validity to policy implications user fees have been promoted as a potential complementary funding mechanism for health care in developing countries in this paper we appraise the use of contingent valuation cv as a tool to help develop user fees schemes that could be used to assist in allocating and partially fund health care a random sample of 499 patients seeking care in primary health care centers in palestine were asked to reveal their willingness to pay values for specified improvements in the quality of delivered medical care empirical analysis suggests that in this context cv can lead to internally consistent results and useful policy implications

welfare state and life satisfaction evidence from public health care we examine the link between the welfare state and citizens subjective wellbeing by using evidence from public health care services by combining local level data on public health care and individual level data on life satisfaction we show that relatively high expenditures in health care have a positive effect on individuals life satisfaction in our data we find some evidence for an ends against the middle equilibrium in provision of public health care where middle income individuals prefer higher public expenditure than low income or high income individuals further our results indicate that the welfare benefit of public provision depends on individual political orientation

introduction to the special issue on the role of nonfarm income in poverty reduction evidence from asia and east africa in this special issue we present seven studies that collectively attempt to investigate the role of non farm income in long term and short term poverty reduction in asia and africa the first four studies out of the seven use long term panel data over two decades in the philippines thailand bangladesh and india these studies show drastic increases in non farm income shares and corresponding declines in poverty levels over time especially in the philippines and thailand education levels of household members and returns to education also increased significantly in these countries the remaining three studies use cross sectional and short term panel data from ethiopia kenya and uganda these african studies show high proportions of poor households and low shares of non farm income that are somewhat comparable to the situation in the 1980s described in the asian studies without the green revolution that provided stable farm income and potential financial resources to invest in children education in asia it is not clear if african farm households can follow the asian examples

the gender gap in agricultural productivity the role of market imperfections abstractthis paper hypothesises that labour and credit market imperfections by discouraging off farm income generating activities and restricting access to inputs respectively affect female farm productivity more deeply than male productivity the paper develops a theoretical model which decomposes the contribution of various market imperfections to the gender productivity gap empirically we show that agricultural labour productivity is on average 44 per cent lower on female headed plots than on those managed by male heads 34 per cent of this gap is explained by differences in labour market access and 29 per cent by differences in credit access

are african households not leaving agriculture patterns of households income sources in rural sub saharan africa this paper uses comparable income aggregates from 41 national household surveys from 22 countries to explore the patterns of income generation among rural households in sub saharan africa and to compare household income strategies in sub saharan africa with those in other regions the paper seeks to understand how geography drives these strategies focusing on the role of agricultural potential and distance to urban areas specialization in on farm activities continues to be the norm in rural africa practiced by 52 percent of households as opposed to 21 percent of households in other regions regardless of distance and integration in the urban context when agro climatic conditions are favorable farming remains the occupation of choice for most households in the african countries for which the study has geographically explicit information however the paper finds no evidence that african households are on a different trajectory than households in other regions in terms of transitioning to non agricultural based income strategies

global value chains large scale farming and poverty long term effects in senegal this paper presents panel data evidence on the impact of expansion of global value chains and large scale export oriented farms in developing countries over almost a decade we estimate the income effects of wage employment on large scale farms in the horticultural export sector in senegal using data from two survey rounds covering a seven years period of rapid expansion of the sector we estimate average income effects as well as heterogeneous income effects using fixed effects and quantile fixed effects regressions we find that poverty and inequality reduced much faster in the research area than elsewhere in senegal employment in the horticultural export sector is associated with higher household income and the income effect is strongest for the poorest households expansion of the horticultural export sector in senegal has been particularly pro poor through creating employment that is accessible and creates substantial income gains for the poorest half of the rural population these pro poor employment effects contrast with insights in the literature on increased inequality from rural wage employment

how infrastructure and financial institutions affect rural income and poverty evidence from bangladesh the mechanisms by which the poor benefit from economic growth remain a topic of debate in development literature we address this issue in the context of rural bangladesh using a pooled dataset of three household panels between 1991 2001 expansion of irrigation paved roads electricity and access to formal and informal credit have through different veins led to higher rural farm and non farm incomes accounting for exogenous local agroclimatic endowments that explain a large part of the variation in the growth of infrastructure and credit programmes however this has not translated into substantial reductions in poverty for the poorest households

nonfarm employment and rural welfare evidence from the himalayas the potential importance of nonfarm employment for the welfare of rural households has long been recognized but whether the nonfarm sector offers prospects for improving the welfare of the rural poor remains a contentious issue we examine distributional and well being effects of nonfarm employment of rural households in the himalayas we account for heterogeneity of nonfarm employment and estimate a system of structural equations to better understand the causal linkages between nonfarm employment and household well being the results confirm that disaggregating nonfarm employment activities matters for understanding the relationship between nonfarm employment and rural welfare while low return nonfarm employment is associated with lower income inequality high return nonfarm activities have a disequalizing effect on the distribution of household incomes we also find that the ability to engage in high return nonfarm activities is associated with higher economic well being poor households on the other hand tend to rely on low return activities that do not contribute to improved well being

is there a metropolitan bias the relationship between poverty and city size in a selection of developing countries this paper provides evidence from eight developing countries of an inverse relationship between poverty and city size poverty is both more widespread and deeper in very small and small towns than in large or very large cities this basic pattern is generally robust to the choice of poverty line the paper shows further that for all eight countries a majority of the urban poor live in medium small or very small towns moreover it is shown that the greater incidence and severity of consumption poverty in smaller towns is generally compounded by similarly greater deprivation in terms of access to basic infrastructure services such as electricity heating gas sewerage and solid waste disposal we illustrate for one country morocco that inequality within large cities is not driven by a severe dichotomy between slum dwellers and others robustness checks are performed to assess whether the findings in the paper hinge on a specific definition of urban area are driven by differences in the cost of

public provision of private goods government may provide a good that can if legally permitted be supplemented by private purchases policy is determined by majority rule under standard assumptions on preferences a majority voting equilibrium exists a regime of positive government provision with no restriction on private supplements is shown to be majority preferred to a regime of either only market provision or only government provision combined public and private expenditure on the good is higher under this dual provision regime than under either of the alternatives under some preference configurations the median income voter is pivotal under others a voter with income below the median is pivotal

the effect of remittances on labour supply in the republic of haiti we examine the labour supply effect of remittances in the republic of haiti the prime international remittances recipient country in the latin american and caribbean lac region relative to its gdp unlike previous empirical literature we address three econometric issues that may bias the estimates we account for endogeneity of the remittances with respect to labour supply for the zero inflated nature of our dependent variable hours of work and for the self selection of the migrant sample our results are in line with previous literature and point to a decline of labour supply in the presence of remittances however contrary to previous findings the labour market response to remittances of female household heads is not as sensitive as male s

nonfarm employment agricultural shocks and poverty dynamics evidence from rural uganda this article examines the role of off farm employment in poverty reduction over a short period of time by using panel data from 894 rural ugandan households in 2003 and 2005 taking advantage of the unique off farm labor supply and income data we analyzed how households respond to negative agricultural shocks especially through off farm labor supply and income to mitigate crop income loss our analysis indicates that the flexibility of labor time allocation varies across off farm jobs and that only low skilled and low wage jobs tend to be used to mitigate negative shocks especially among the asset poor

farm nonfarm linkages in rural sub saharan africa this paper is an accumulation over the past 25 years of a body of detailed work examining the structure of africa s rural nonfarm economy first it systematically reviews empirical evidence on the nature and magnitude of the african rural nonfarm economy it then explores differences across locality and size across countries and over time in an effort to assess likely patterns of growth a subsequent review of key production and consumption parameters allows an estimate of the magnitude of the agricultural growth multipliers in africa the paper concludes with a brief discussion of policies and programs that will be necessary if farm nonfarm growth linkages are to achieve their full potential

rural nonagricultural activities in development theory and application abstract this paper focusses on the potentially important role of rural nonagricultural activity in the development process using the hymer resnick z goods model as a point of departure we first show that its pessimistic conclusions are based on rather restrictive assumptions as applied to the colonial period we relax these assumptions indicating the theoretical possibility of a substantially more positive scenario for that period subsequently we analyze the role of z goods traditional and nontraditional in the post independence era again distinguishing between archetypal pessimistic and optimistic cases finally the comparative historical experience of the philippines and taiwan is brought to bear to illustrate the argument empirically

an economic evaluation of spread on rwanda s rural population abstractsustainable partnerships to enhance rural enterprises and agricultural development spread was a programme to enhance the value chain for commodities in rwanda including coffee the implicit concept was that improving the value chain would increase the incomes for smallholders and hence reduce the poverty rate the results indicate that rwanda coffee prices increased relative to an index price for traded coffee with the implementation of spread in addition the results indicate that participation in the coffee market at this time was associated with higher household income and lower rates of poverty

right target wrong mechanism agricultural modernization and poverty reduction in uganda summary household consumption surveys suggest that the downward trend in rural poverty indicators recorded in uganda during the 1990s has been reversed since 2000 this paper examines the ugandan government s strategy to reduce rural poverty the plan for modernization of agriculture pma it argues that while there appear few better choices of target for the pma than to improve incomes of the rural poor through increased agricultural productivity emphasis on decentralization as a mechanism for poverty reduction is misplaced in the current political context of uganda the paper considers what alternative mechanisms might better deliver reductions in rural poverty

a comparison of two methods for eliciting contingent valuations of colorectal cancer screening willingness to pay wtp is being used increasingly in health technology assessment although a number of methodological issues remain unresolved using data obtained from a randomised questionnaire survey we investigated the metrical properties of two wtp formats the open ended question versus the payment scale in the context of screening for colorectal cancer approximately 2800 responses were analysed household income attitudes toward health promotion and personal risk perceptions were the principal determinants of the nature and value of response in comparison with the open ended format the payment scale achieved a higher completion rate and generated higher valuations we believe that a framing effect is the most plausible explanation for these differences in performance in contrast to previous findings we do not find subjects perceptions of the resource cost of interventions to be a convincing explanation for either their wtp values or inconsistencies between values and preferences although a proportion of respondents protested at the notion of valuation the majority offer positive valuations although typically of a lower value that non protesters

rural nonfarm employment and farming household level linkages this article introduces the articles in agricultural economics vol 40 no 2 march 2009 first we introduce their objectives in a brief review of existing literature on developing country trends in rural income diversification in particular rural nonfarm employment rnfe and its impact on farm technology choice in crops and livestock and thus on agricultural modernization and diversification then we preview the key points of the articles which use distinctive primary datasets from albania bulgaria china india mexico nigeria the philippines senegal and vietnam to document the impacts of rnfe and their implications for farm technology and farm activity

shared literacy and employment in the nonfarm sector this article empirically examines the external effect of family literacy on the earnings of illiterate workers considering recent findings that rural nonfarm sectors in developing countries are becoming more important in determining the welfare of households this article tests two hypotheses 1 an illiterate person living with literate members i e a proximate illiterate person is more likely to find a job in the nonfarm sector than is an illiterate person living with no literate person i e an isolated illiterate person and 2 wage income of a proximate illiterate worker is higher than that of an isolated illiterate worker the empirical results suggest that proximate illiterate persons earn higher wages than isolated illiterate persons because they are more likely to be employed in the nonfarm sector

the effects of risk and shocks on non farm enterprise development in rural ethiopia summary this paper assesses the impact of risk and shocks on non farm enterprise development in rural ethiopia using a matched household enterprise community dataset augmented with precipitation based measures of risk the likelihood of running a non farm firm and the returns to running such firms co vary with agricultural productivity shocks diversification into non farm activities thus provides limited protection against fluctuations in agricultural performance this may explain why ex ante risk has no impact on the likelihood of running a non farm firm it nonetheless hampers non farm enterprise development by repressing investment and inducing sorting into less capital intensive activities

non farm activity household expenditure and poverty reduction in rural vietnam 2002 2008 summary diversifying into non farm activities has been suggested as an effective way out of poverty for rural households in developing countries using the vietnamese household living standards surveys of 2002 2004 2006 and 2008 we test this claim and investigate the effect of non farm sector involvement on poverty and expenditure growth our endogeneity corrected estimates show that an additional household member involved with non farm activity reduces the probability of poverty by 7 12 and increases the household expenditure by 14 over a two year period our findings also indicate that non farm involvement reduces the hours worked on farm but not the household agricultural income

how social and human capital influence opportunity recognition and resource mobilization in india s handloom industry abstract small scale firms in rural areas play an extremely important role in the development of any country and especially in developing countries to understand entrepreneurs who operate in a low technology industry we rely on the network perspective on entrepreneurship in this paper we investigate how the social and human capital of entrepreneurs in this case master weavers in the handloom industry influence their ability to recognize opportunities and mobilize resources in addition to examining the direct effects we also explore the possibilities of social capital mediating between human capital on the one hand and opportunity recognition and resource mobilization on the other this paper adds to existing literature in two ways firstly we expand the social capital paradigm by including different cultural settings and links to existing studies regarding small enterprises secondly we provide additional evidence to the ongoing debate as to what constitutes a good network

the changing role of non farm household enterprises in vietnam summary in this paper we study the importance of the non farm household enterprise nfhe sector in vietnam we do find that nfhes increase income and reduce between household inequality however the role of the nfhe sector has been diminishing especially in urban areas and the nfhes have been affected by trade liberalization in the period 1993 2002 in terms of policy this suggests that there is increasing scope for targeting nfhe sector policies at those nfhes that are in the best position to benefit from the new opportunities in the liberalizing environment

rainfall uncertainty and occupational choice in agricultural households of rural nepal abstract although agriculture is the main occupation in rural nepal evidence suggests that households strive to diversify their sources of income this paper investigates why this is the case using household data from the world bank and information on rainfall for the various rural districts of nepal we find that occupational choice is highly correlated to the uncertainty associated with historical rainfall patterns where the head is employed in agriculture other family members are less likely to choose agriculture as an occupation in districts where rain is more uncertain estimates indicate that for a 1 per cent increase in the coefficient of variation of rain there is a 0 61 per cent decrease in the probability of choosing the same occupation as the household head where the head is classified as self employed in agriculture the negative effect of rainfall uncertainty on occupational choice is less evident in households that have access to credit and in households with relatively high levels of

does nonagricultural labor relax farmers credit constraints evidence from longitudinal data for vietnam we examine the relationship between participation in nonagricultural labor activities and farming production decisions focusing on the use of inputs using longitudinal data for vietnam from 1993 to 1998 we find that households engaged in nonagricultural labor spend significantly more on seeds services hired labor and livestock inputs this is consistent with the hypothesis that nonagricultural labor income relaxes credit constraints to farming