Effects of Non‐Farm Employment on Rural Income Inequality in Developing Countries: An Investment Perspective

This paper makes several points based on a review of household survey evidence from Africa, Asia and Latin America. (i) In contrast to conventional wisdom, the evidence is very mixed as to the effect of non‐farm employment on rural income inequality. The non‐farm employment and microenterprise programmes now in vogue will not necessarily resolve rural income inequality problems and attendant social tensions nor automatically benefit the poor. (ii) Policymakers should be worried by substantial evidence of poor people's inability to overcome important entry barriers to many non‐farm activities. (iii) The main determinants of unequal access to non‐farm activities are the distribution of capacity to make investments in non‐farm assets and the relative scarcity of low capital entry barrier activities. Therefore, it is crucial for public investments and policy to favour an increase in the access of the poor to assets that allow them to overcome non‐farm employment entry barriers, (iv) It would be an error to assume that one can address asset‐poverty and inequality in the non‐farm sector without addressing farm‐side problems and vice versa.     

A general equilibrium analysis of conjunctive ground and surface water use with an application to Morocco

Groundwater resources (GW) account for nearly 30% of the world's sustainable water supplies. Yet, this resource, which is fraught with externalities, has largely been left unregulated. The economic literature on GW is predominantly of a partial equilibrium type. We analyze GW regulation in a general equilibrium setting, focusing on the stabilization value of GW under natural (drought) and economic (rural–urban water transfer) shocks. A general equilibrium approach allows evaluating direct and indirect effects of GW regulation on agriculture and nonagriculture sectors and extends the scope for water policy. The analysis is applied to Morocco by extending an existing computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to include ground and surface water (SW) resources. We study effects of (i) an increase in GW extraction cost (e.g., as a result of prolonged extraction beyond natural recharge that lowers the aquifer's water table), (ii) a transfer of SW from rural (irrigation) to urban (domestic) use, and (iii) a reduction of water availability due to severe drought. We estimate the value of GW and assess the direct (partial equilibrium) and indirect (general equilibrium) impacts. We find that GW plays a critical role in mitigating the negative effects of these types of shocks.     

The Impact of Agricultural Extension and Roads on Poverty and Consumption Growth in Fifteen Ethiopian Villages

This article investigates whether public investments that led to improvements in road quality and increased access to agricultural extension services led to faster consumption growth and lower rates of poverty in rural Ethiopia. Estimating an Instrumental Variables model using Generalized Methods of Moments and controlling for household fixed effects, we find evidence of positive impacts with meaningful magnitudes. Receiving at least one extension visit reduces headcount poverty by 9.8 percentage points and increases consumption growth by 7.1 percentage points. Access to all-weather roads reduces poverty by 6.9 percentage points and increases consumption growth by 16.3 percentage points. These results are robust to changes in model specification and estimation methods.     

21世纪以来农业基础设施减贫效应研究

目的 农业基础设施不仅是农业稳定生产的重要基石,也是农村贫困治理的重要手段。探究农业基础设施减贫效应,对未来相对贫困治理和减贫经验总结意义重大。方法 文章运用空间自回归模型（SAR）和空间误差模型（SEM）,分析21世纪以来中国农业基础设施减贫效应及内生机制。结果 农业交通基础设施中的公路密度、河道密度和铁路密度分别显著降低农村贫困发生率1.424、0.03和0.05个单位;农业生产基础设施中的人均装机容量、水土流失治理能力和每公顷塑料薄膜用量分别显著降低农村贫困发生率0.122、0.212和0.011个单位。从控制变量来看,每千人播种面积,农村人均教育水平和人均乡镇卫生院床位数也发挥着积极的减贫作用。由减贫机制可知,农业基础设施主要通过降低农业自然灾害和增加农业产值,进而提高农户收入和降低农村贫困发生率。结论 应尽快完善农田田间道路、农业生产基础设施建设和高标准农田建设,加强农村公共基础设施投入,促进农业增产和农村减贫。     

Government Spending, Growth and Poverty in Rural India

Using state-level data for 1970–93, a simultaneous equation model was developed to estimate the direct and indirect effects of different types of government expenditure on rural poverty and productivity growth in India. The results show that in order to reduce rural poverty, the Indian government should give highest priority to additional investments in rural roads and agricultural research. These types of investment not only have much larger poverty impacts per rupee spent than any other government investment, but also generate higher productivity growth. Apart from government spending on education, which has the third largest marginal impact on rural poverty and productivity growth, other investments (including irrigation, soil and water conservation, health, and rural and community development) have only modest impacts on growth and poverty per additional rupee spent.     

Is Oil Palm Expansion a Challenge to Agroecology? Smallholders Practising Industrial Farming in Mexico

Agroecology has become a powerful alternative paradigm for rural development. In contrast to conventional approaches, this paradigm shifts the emphasis from technology and markets to local knowledge, social justice and food sovereignty, to overcome rural poverty and environmental degradation. However, the spread of this approach faces several obstacles. This paper deals with one of these obstacles: the ‘preference’ of smallholders for industrial farming. We specifically analyse the widespread uptake up of oil palm by smallholders in Chiapas. Contrary to agro‐ecological assumptions, oil palm proved favourable to smallholders in Chiapas because of historical and contemporary state–peasant relations and the advantageous economic circumstances within the oil palm sector. Based on this research, we identify four challenges for agroecology: (i) the existence of contradictory interests within the peasantry as a result of social differentiation; (ii) the role of the state in making conventional development models relatively favourable to smallholders; (iii) the prevalence of modernization ideologies in many rural areas; and (iv) the need for this paradigm to acknowledge smallholders' agency also when engaged in industrial farming. These challenges need to be tackled for agroecology to offer viable alternatives in a context of agro‐industrialization.     

Getting stuck,falling behind or moving forward: Rural livelihood movements and persistence in Nepal

Research on household livelihood dynamics is central to rural poverty reduction. In this paper, we adopt a three-wave panel dataset to explore the persistence of and transitions in household livelihoods in three districts of Nepal using duration and dynamic probit models. The results demonstrate that the livelihood strategies of rural households are dynamic: approximately 16 per cent of the sample households transitioned up to high-remunerative livelihood strategies, 10 per cent of the households shifted down to either low- or medium-remunerative livelihood strategies, and 69 per cent remained trapped in low-remunerative livelihood strategies. The major upward transition occurred from medium-remunerative strategies to high-remunerative strategies (14 per cent). Overall, 70 per cent of the households persisted in one of the three livelihood strategies, and the remaining 30 per cent changed their strategy at least once. This dynamic is associated with the households’ duration in a particular livelihood strategy and the various characteristics of households and household heads. Understanding livelihood movement, livelihood persistence and the associated covariates and targeting the poor on this basis is crucial to combating rural poverty and dismantling poverty traps. To this end, the present study suggests (i) strengthening physical and financial asset endowments to address low-remunerative strategies, (ii) improving infrastructure connectivity, particularly in remote and inaccessible areas, (iii) insuring against shocks, iv) enhancing opportunities for generating remittances and enabling petty trade, and (v) supporting the establishment of business ventures.     

Integrating a random utility model for non-timber forest users into a strategic forest planning model

In this paper, we developed a mixed-integer non-linear programming model that integrates access road development and a utility theoretic spatial choice model of hunters into a strategic forest harvest-scheduling model. The model was applied to an operationally sized Forest Management Agreement (FMA) area in central Alberta, Canada. The resulting behavioral model had approximately 2.6 million decision variables and about 96,000 constraints, and was used to examine the impacts of timber harvesting on hunters’ preference for hunting sites. We also evaluated the impacts of various levels of hunter welfare on: (i) the degree of tradeoff between timber and hunting benefits, (ii) timber harvest schedules, and (iii) the marginal costs of producing timber products. The results showed significant tradeoffs between timber and hunting benefits and a clear link between landscape characteristics and changes and behavioral responses by hunters.     

Land Reform: Taking a Long(er) View

The paper proposes a broad argument that the end of state–led development from the 1970s coincided with (i) the final wave of major redistributive land reform, and its place within transitions to capitalism, that lasted from about 1910 to the 1970s, and (ii) the beginnings of contemporary 'globalization'. Self–styled 'new wave' agrarian reform in the age of neo–liberalism, centred on property rights, is unlikely to deliver much on its claims to both stimulate agricultural productivity and reduce rural poverty. The reasons are grounded in the basic relations and dynamics of capitalism, and how these are intensified and reshaped by and through globalization. Understanding these processes, with all their inevitable unevenness, requires (i) recognizing that the historical conditions of the 'classic' agrarian question no longer apply, and (ii) developing the means to investigate and understand better the changing realities facing different agrarian classes within a general tendency to the concentration of capital and fragmentation of labour, including how the latter may generate new agrarian questions of labour.     

Monitoring land governance: Understanding roots and shoots

Despite a growing interest among land use policymakers to identify the indicators that measure changes in land tenure systems, little consensus exists about what framework can functionally analyze land tenure systems, and how it should be developed. The existing indicators have mainly focused on measuring the “effects” of land tenure (in)security and often neglected the “causes”. Hence, comprehensive monitoring of land tenure systems has been poorly understood and practiced. Given their multifaceted meanings, land and its related concepts have been a challenging issue for policymakers. Accordingly, the overall objective of this paper was to propose a functional and analytical framework on how to study monitoring land governance from roots to shoots through five main studies: i) understanding the historical trajectories of land, ii) recognizing institutional arrangements on land, iii) identifying land governance grammar, iv) defining land governance typology, and v) assessing land use changes. In line with this objective, the general research question of this study is how and by whom a monitoring system should be developed. Overall, this study can be considered as a conceptual framework that has been designed to conceptualize, develop, build, and apply a functional and analytical framework for formulating land governance grammar to explain how access to land is governed. Unlike previous studies, this study focuses on both causes and effects of strong land governance (SLG) and weak land governance (WLG). The paper discusses that land governance allows various stakeholders to participate in government decisions and ensures the security of their livelihoods. However, land governance could be either poor or strong depending on the government decision-making process. The paper also concluded that SLG is a precondition for economic growth and poverty alleviation in rural areas of developing countries.     

农户参与乡村旅游扶贫适应性评价指标体系研究

构建农户参与乡村旅游扶贫适应性评价指标体系,以福建省福鼎市赤溪村参与乡村旅游扶贫的农户为调研对象,运用AHP(层次分析法)计算各指标的权重;根据农户调研实际情况,运用适应性评价模型对农户的适应性综合值进行计算并评价。结果表明:对农户参与乡村旅游扶贫适应性影响最大的是经济适应性因子,影响最小的是生态适应性因子;对乡村旅游扶贫政策的了解度、年旅游收入、家庭成员从事乡村旅游的意愿度以及对游客的欢迎度的综合权重较大,传统节庆活动的参与度、使用清洁能源程度的综合权重较小;总体评价为较为适应,但综合得分值较低,仅为3.106。最后,根据农户的实际适应性情况,提出完善乡村旅游基础设施、加大扶贫政策宣传力度、提高旅游扶贫政策利用程度、给予困难农户更大的扶持力度、创新旅游经营模式和实行多项扶持的发展建议。     

Rational But Poor? An Explanation for Rural Economic Livelihood Strategy

Using panel data for six rural sub‐Saharan Africa countries, this article tests two hypotheses: (i) household‐specific staple food price bands resulting from market failures in the presence of liquidity constraints and rainfed agriculture induces rural household specialisation in food crops as an economic livelihood strategy; (ii) specialisation in food crops yields inferior welfare than diversification, and keeps households trapped in poverty. The results lend strong support to both hypotheses, reinforcing the need for public investment in rural infrastructure in order to encourage household livelihood diversification for improved welfare.     

农村劳动力转移的减贫及其空间溢出效应——基于省级面板数据的分析

[目的]旨在探讨农村劳动力转移的减贫及其空间溢出效应,以期准确估计农村劳动力转移对农村减贫的作用。[方法]文章基于我国大陆31个省（市、自治区）的面板数据,通过构建空间计量模型,设置邻接、地理和经济3种空间权重矩阵,实证检验了2007—2017年农村劳动力转移对农村贫困的影响。[结果]（1）我国省域农村贫困发生率和农村劳动力转移程度均有显著的空间集聚特征,农村贫困发生率呈现出“高—高”和“低—低”的空间分布特征。（2）在邻接权重下,该地区农村劳动力转移规模每提高1%,使得该地区的农村贫困降低了0.317%,邻近地区的农村贫困降低了0.136%;在地理权重下,该地区农村劳动力转移规模每提高1%,使该地区的农村贫困降低了0.323%,邻近地区的农村贫困降低了0.129%;在经济权重下,该地区农村劳动力转移规模每提高1%,将使该地区的农村贫困降低0.315%,邻近地区的农村贫困降低0.192%。[结论]农村劳动力转移不仅有利于本区域内的农村贫困减少,还可以通过溢出效应来缓解相邻地区的农村贫困。     

World food prices and poverty in Indonesia

Spikes in international food prices in 2007–2008 worsened poverty incidence in Indonesia, both rural and urban, but only by small amounts. The paper reaches this conclusion using a multisectoral and multihousehold general equilibrium model of the Indonesian economy. The negative effect on poor consumers, operating through their living costs, outweighed the positive effect on poor farmers, operating through their incomes. Indonesia's post‐2004 rice import restrictions shielded its internal rice market from the temporary world price increases, muting the increase in poverty. But it did this only by imposing large and permanent increases in both domestic rice prices and poverty incidence. Poverty incidence increased more among rural than urban people, even though higher agricultural prices mean higher incomes for many of the rural poor. Gains to poor farmers were outweighed by the losses incurred by the large number of rural poor who are net buyers of food, and the fact that food represents a large share of their total budgets, even larger on average than for the urban poor. The main beneficiaries of higher food prices are not the rural poor, but the owners of agricultural land and capital, many of whom are urban based.     

山区农户对森林旅游业的参与意愿及影响因素研究

在行为经济学相关理论的基础上,基于福建山区221个农户的调研数据,运用有序Probit模型探究影响农户参与森林旅游业意愿的主要因素。研究结果表明:山区农户对森林旅游业的参与意愿不高;性别、健康状况、家庭成员是否为党员或干部、屋前是否通公路、家庭成员累计出外打工时间、对森林旅游政策了解程度、政府扶持力度及未来收益预期等因素是影响农户对森林旅游业参与意愿的主要因素。基于此,建议提高农村妇女参与森林旅游业的综合能力、加强政策的支持与引导及推进森林旅游业产业链延伸等。     

Has Chinese Certified Emission Reduction trading reduced rural poverty in China?

Consolidating and expanding poverty alleviation while simultaneously reducing carbon emissions has become one of the main issues facing China. The Chinese Certified Emission Reduction (CCER) trading programme is an important supplementary mechanism to China's carbon trading market. Based on the data of 1782 counties in China from 2006 to 2017 and a difference-in-differences model, this study investigates the rural poverty reduction effect of CCER trading. We find that: (1) during the sample period, CCER trading has increased the per capita net income of rural residents by at least 2.5% or 187.5 RMB (about 27.8 USD or 39.3 AUD) per year. (2) The poverty reduction effect of CCER trading in poor counties is greater than that in nonpoor counties. (3) Some relevant heterogeneous effects are also measured. We find that CCER trading of hydropower projects has played a significant poverty reduction effect; the poverty reduction effect is further enhanced when the county has additional CCER projects; we also identify regional differences with CCER trading having a greater poverty reduction effect in the western and central regions. (4) Compared with the implementation of the CCER project, trading the emission reductions generated by the CCER project has brought more significant poverty reduction effects.     

The impact of the Asian Crisis on Australia's primary exports: why it wasn't so bad

This article explores the modest impact of the Asian Crisis on Australia's primary commodity exports. Simulations using a global general equilibrium model show: (i) as capital flees Asia, investment in Australia increases and the trade deficit grows; (ii) while terms of trade deteriorate in the short run, they improve in the medium run as import demand increases in the crisis countries; (iii) exports of primary commodities expand as the crisis countries try to export more; (iv) more income-elastic primary commodities fare less well than the income-inelastic foodstuffs as incomes decline in the crisis countries; (v) Australia's relatively low dependence on manufactured exports was a buffer as manufactured exports came under heavy pressure from exports from the crisis countries.     

World food prices and poverty incidence in a food exporting country: a multihousehold general equilibrium analysis for Thailand

A multisectoral, multihousehold general equilibrium model of the Thai economy is used to analyze the implications of recent increases in international food prices. Higher food prices, especially staple grains, worsen poverty incidence in Thailand despite the presence of large numbers of poor farmers, many of whom benefit from higher prices. The positive effect on the welfare of poor farmers is dominated by the negative effect on poor consumers. Of the recent price increases for rice, sugar, cassava, maize, soybeans, urea, and petroleum, the increases in rice prices raise poverty incidence the most, despite Thailand being the world's largest rice exporter.     

A Dynamic Computable General Equilibrium Treatment of the Ban on UK Beef Exports: A Note

Hubbard and Philippidis Journal of Agricultural Economics (2001) Vol. 52, pp. 87–95] employ the standard Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to analyse the impact of the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE)‐induced ban on exports of UK beef. This note extends that study in four ways: (i) the dynamic GTAP model is employed to characterise long‐run savings–investment behaviour more correctly; (ii) the effect of the foot‐and‐mouth disease (FMD) outbreak of 2001 is included; (iii) an allowance is made for different levels of recovery in consumer confidence; and (iv) the impact analysis is now compared through time with a ‘no‐ban’ baseline. Long‐run comparisons after removal of the ban suggest that its legacy may continue for some time. However, because of the remedial safeguards and assurances offered in the wake of the BSE and FMD crises, there is a possibility that exports and outputs increase. Nevertheless, the economy‐wide impacts are negligible in both the short and the long run.