贫困地区农户大病风险处理策略研究(二)

疾病尤其是大病会对农户产生重大影响,农户在与其抗争的过程中已经形成了一系列缓解疾病风险冲击的策略.本文基于湖北两个贫困县的大样本农户调查数据,探讨贫困地区农户应对大病风险的策略类型和层次,并对策略的有效性进行评估.农户主要依赖自身资源、扩展家庭和社区资源系形成的非正规机制应对大病冲击;贫甲农户因受到非正规资源的限制,更需要来自正规机制的帮助.     

农牧户生计风险及策略研究

农户的生计总是处于各种风险之中,而广大的农户缺乏风险的认知和防范的保障机制,风险一旦发生对农户产生的福利损失是巨大的。文章就内蒙古科尔沁左翼后旗3个村进行了为期2个月的实地调查,在回顾近三年农户所遇风险的基础上,通过简单的描述统计和典型案例分析,总结了农户面临的风险及预防和处理风险的策略。     

民间借贷与新农合对大病农户作用的比较分析

为了比较民间借贷和新农合对农户应对大病风险的作用,了解正规医疗保险对农户的保障效果,本文利用湖北、四川两省四个贫困县的农户调查数据建立多元线性回归模型进行计量分析,并根据分析结果给出了相关建议.     

健康风险冲击对农户收入的影响

本文基于中国8个省份、1354个农户、跨度15年的微观面板数据,测算了大病冲击对于农户长期收入的影响以及健康风险冲击持续的时间。我们发现:(1)大病冲击在随后的12年里对于农户人均纯收入都有显著的负面影响;(2)大病冲击对于农户的短期与中期影响使得患病户人均纯收入平均降低5%—6%;(3)健康风险冲击的长期影响可持续大约15年,并且冲击对于中低收入农户的影响更为严重。     

浅析农户面临的主要风险及其应对策略

分析了农户面临的主要风险：自然风险、社会风险和经济风险,并在分析目前农户对这些风险的主要应对措施的基础上,提出一些具有针对性的应对策略来更好的有效防范和化解农户面临的风险,主要包括：进一步完善风险防范体系,大力发展政策性农业保险;加强社会治安、严厉打击不法行为和大力发展农产品期货市场。     

贫困地区大病农户子女教育投资状况及影响因素

本文通过对湖北省红安县农户的抽样调查,对有家庭成员患大病农户的子女教育投资状况及其影响因素进行了分析,并提出了相应的对策建议。分析结果为：在考虑的15个影响因素中,有7个因素对大病农户子女教育投资水平影响显著,其余8个因素影响不显著。     

中国南方稻农干旱风险处理策略

干旱对中国农业生产的影响越来越严重。本文从微观的角度探讨了在面临干旱时农户所采用的各种应对策略,并对这些策略的有效性进行了一定的评估。本文发现,多数农户通过这些策略成功地应对了一般性的干旱,但一些贫困农户在此方面仍然面临着较大的困难。     

经济转型中农户非正规收入风险处理机制的变迁

农户不仅追求收入的提高,而且要避免收入波动的风险.在正规风险规避机制缺失的情况下,农户在长期的实践中已经发展出一些非正规机制来处理风险.经济转型过程中的体制变化和结构变化使农村的社会经济面貌发生了巨大变化,导致了农户各种非正规风险处理机制的变化.目前,农户不得不在很大程度上依靠事前的收入平滑机制来处理风险,有时甚至被迫承受风险所带来的不利后果,这会同时在效率和公平方面带来消极后果.     

新疆大病保险风险评估

由于经验数据和评估方法的缺乏，大病保险的风险评估一直是一个难题，尤其是定价风险和医疗管理风险，是所有风险中不确定性最高的，本文尝试从新疆某市2011年来历时三年实际历史数据出发，粗略评估大病保险的定价风险，并对医疗管理风险和其他风险作简单分析，提出建议。     

农户土地退出风险认知及规避能力的影响因素分析

以重庆市l 829户农户的调查数据为基础,对农户土地退出风险认知及规避能力进行分析,并运用有序Probit模型,分析了影响农户宅基地、承包地退出风险规避能力的因素及方向.结果表明:①多数农户认为土地退出风险较高,同时农户对于退出承包地较宅基地存在更大的顾虑,农户更倾向退出宅基地;另一方面,多数农户规避土地退出风险能力较弱,相比承包地,农户具有更强的宅基地退出风险规避能力.②宅基地风险规避能力来看,户主年龄、家庭有无稳定城镇住所、本村是否在进行农民新村建设、退地后能否享受高水平城镇社保对农户宅基地退出风险规避存在显著正向影响;家庭有无养殖经营对退出风险规避存在显著负向影响.③承包地风险规避能力来看,户主年龄、户主是否购买商业保险、家庭有无稳定非农收入、退地后能否及时获得就业培训与援助、退地后能否享受高水平城镇社保对农户承包地退出风险规避存在显著正向影响;家庭有无养殖经营对农户承包地退出风险规避存在显著负向影响.④影响农户宅基地退出风险规避能力的因素少于影响农户承包地退出风险规避能力的因素,同一因素也可能对农户宅基地、承包地退出风险规避能力产生不同的影响.     

Rural livelihoods in Armenia

This article explores the structure of the rural economy in Armenia from a farm household perspective. Ownership of capital and access to activities are examined on the basis of data from a recent large‐scale survey of farm households in Armenia. Different measures for the outcome of livelihood strategies in terms of well‐being are observed. Income‐poor households are found to be less well endowed especially with financial and social capital. They derive smaller income shares from economic activities and more from dissaving and social payments. The findings are relevant to policies aimed at alleviating rural poverty.     

Consumption,habit formation,and savings: Evidence from a rural household panel survey

Protecting consumption from the effects of uninsured risk is vital for rural farming households, who tend to be poor and live close to subsistence level. Income uncertainty and habit formation play important roles in the consumption and savings. Variability in weather conditions has a strong linkage with variability in agricultural income in developing countries. This study analyzes consumption and saving decisions of rural farm households in India. Using household panel data for 4 years, we estimated consumption equation accounting for habit formation under income uncertainty. Our findings suggest an evidence for habit formation among rural households. Additionally, we found that both annual and seasonal weather risks significantly influence savings among rural households. Findings from this study also suggest a robust and vibrant farm economy and that the nonfarm economy could contribute to the economic well‐being of rural farming households.     

Returns from income strategies in rural Poland

In order to stabilize and improve their income situation, rural households are strongly encouraged to diversify their activities both in and outside the agricultural sector. Often, however, this phenomenon takes on only moderate proportions. This article addresses issues of rural households' income diversification in the case of Poland. It investigates returns from rural households' income strategies using propensity score matching methods and extensive datasets spanning 1998–2008. Results suggest that returns from combining farm and off‐farm activities were lower than returns from concentrating on farming or on self‐employment outside agriculture. This differential is stable over time although returns from diversification have relatively improved after the accession of Poland to the European Union. This is also visible in the fact that since 2006, returns from combining farm and off‐farm activities have equalized with returns from relying solely on hired off‐farm labour, thus smoothing away the difference observed before the accession. Further, over the analysed period, households pursuing a diversification strategy performed better than those relying solely on unearned income. Finally, in general, incomes in households combining farm and off‐farm activities were higher than in those combining off‐farm income sources.     

中国农户的收入风险应对机制与消费波动:来自陕西的经验证据

在正规风险应对机制缺失的背景下,中国农户很大程度上依靠社会网络内的风险统筹和跨时期消费平滑等自发机制来应对收入风险,缓解消费波动。本文运用logistic回归方法,对来自陕西1 151户农户的问卷调查数据进行了计量分析,检验了两类风险应对机制对消费波动的影响。经验分析结果表明:在农户缓解收入风险所带来的消费波动的过程中,社会网络内的风险统筹仍然发挥着较大的作用;跨时期消费平滑机制也发挥着重要作用,但从内部结构来看,通过储蓄实现的自我保险的作用最为重要,信贷市场借款的作用较为有限。     

Covariate and Idiosyncratic Shocks and Coping Strategies for Poor and Non-poor Rural Households in India

The objective of the paper is to track the association between different type of shocks experienced by rural households and corresponding coping strategies opted by them as they are, not only exposed to household-level and community level shocks, but also, lack effective risk management strategies which make them vulnerable to get into chronic poverty. A probit analysis has been used to articulate the comparative static distinction of risk management strategies between poor and non poor rural households using Additional Rural Incomes Survey/Rural Economic and Demographic Survey (ARIS/REDS) data surveyed by National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) in rural India across 17 states to get a comparative static analysis. Households, generally, withdraw savings, seek remittances from migrant family members, take loan from formal and informal lenders and sell their existing assets and participate in Government sponsored welfare based programs to control after effect of shocks. Comparatively non-poor rural households could build up safety net (precautionary measure) to cope with price rise and other sudden shocks. But, extremely poor, generally, if don’t get help from relatives or can’t borrow from informal sources, ultimately starve at the time of sudden shocks. The welfare based government programs fail to arrest this extreme situation of grief during the idiosyncratic shocks.

     

A Gendered Model of the Peasant Household: Time poverty and Farm Production in Rural Mozambique

Using insights from a case study on the allocation of labor in subsistence households in Mozambique, this study develops a conceptual framework for examining linkages between time poverty and farm production. An unexpected event such as a health crisis increases the demand for labor provided by women, thus making them more time poor. The model and numerical simulations show that a deterioration in a woman's time constraint will have an adverse effect on agricultural output of the household. This occurs because most women respond to an increase in household work by reducing their work hours on the farm and by reducing their leisure time. The latter outcome is expected to have a negative effect on women's physical and mental health, which will then cause a decline in their productivity on the farm.     

Managing Environmental Risk in Presence of Climate Change: The Role of Adaptation in the Nile Basin of Ethiopia

This study investigates the impact of climate change adaptation on farm households’ downside risk exposure in the Nile Basin of Ethiopia. The analysis relies on a moment-based specification of the stochastic production function. We use an empirical strategy that accounts for the heterogeneity in the decision on whether to adapt or not, and for unobservable characteristics of farmers and their farm. We find that past adaptation to climate change (i) reduces current downside risk exposure, and so the risk of crop failure; (ii) would have been more beneficial to the non-adapters if they adapted, in terms of reduction in downside risk exposure; and (iii) is a successful risk management strategy that makes the adapters more resilient to climatic conditions.     

Social networks near and far: The role of bonding and bridging social capital for assets of the rural poor

With formal insurance and credit markets either absent or inaccessible to rural agents in most poor rural economies, social networks play a highly important role in mitigating the risks that agricultural households face. These kinds of informal insurance schemes are presumed to be most effective in the face of idiosyncratic risk. However, social mechanisms also exist in developing countries that may reduce locally correlated risk such as the adverse economic effects of climatic conditions that affect multiple residents in a village. This paper analyzes the role of localized (bonding) and of spatially dispersed (bridging) social capital in mitigating the impact of idiosyncratic and of locally correlated shocks on farm households’ livestock endowments. Using dynamic panel generalized method of moments (GMM) system estimation with seven‐period panel dataset of over 400 households, we find that bonding social capital is able to protect households’ livestock assets against idiosyncratic shocks, but bridging social capital does not play a role in mitigating the impact of correlated shocks. The results hold up to multiple robustness checks. A test of different hypotheses about the nature of these assets’ trajectories rejects the asset poverty trap hypothesis, and instead finds that livestock asset dynamics are characterized by a single stable equilibrium.     

The role of sources of income and investment opportunities in rural savings

This paper investigates the effect that sources of income and investment opportunities have on the savings behavior of farm households in rural India. The panel nature of the data (agricultural years 1968–1969, 1969–1970 and 1970–1971) allows for the identification of the permanent and transitory components of a household's income. It is shown that income variability (rather than investment opportunities) can account for observed differences in the propensity to save out of different sources (agricultural/non-agricultural). A direct test of the effect of investment opportunities on savings is offered in the second part of the paper. It is observed that capital market conditions have an important effect on this relationship; poor households save more, and rich households save less, in response to an increase in investment opportunities.