Non-farm work and food security among farm households in Northern Ghana

This paper examines the impact of non-farm work on household income and food security among farm households in the Northern Region of Ghana. We analyze the impact by employing propensity score matching method that accounts for self-selection bias. The matching results show that participation in non-farm work exerts a positive and statistically significant effect on household income and food security status, supporting the widely held view that income from non-farm work is crucial to food security and poverty alleviation in rural areas of developing countries.     

Determinants of income diversification amongst rural households in Southern Mali

Household-level panel data from a representative sample of rural households in Southern Mali describing the different sources of household income are used to examine the determinants of income diversification. A conditional fixed effects logit model is employed in the analysis to control for household-specific effects. We find evidence that poorer households have fewer opportunities in non-cropping activities such as livestock rearing and non-farm work, and hence less diversified incomes. This appears to reflect their relative lack of capital, which makes it difficult for them to diversify away from subsistence agriculture. The results also indicate that households in remote areas are less likely to participate in the non-cropping sector than their counterparts closer to local markets, while households with educated heads are more likely to participate in the non-farm sector than those with illiterate heads. The significance of entry-constraints in explaining portfolio diversification suggests that the role of government in making assets — as well as improved infrastructure — available to poorer households is still essential in promoting income diversification.     

Unionization,Inequality and Redistribution

This article explores the implications of the OECD‐wide decline of union density for earnings inequality and income redistribution by looking at aggregate (country‐level) data. Over the period 1975–95, countries that experienced relatively large declines in union density also experienced relatively large increases in earnings inequality. In addition, governments apparently became less willing to engage in ‘compensatory redistribution’ in these countries. Since the early 1990s, however, union decline has become less closely associated with rising earnings inequality and redistributive policy changes. I argue that the declining relevance of unionization has to do with changes in the position of union members in the income distribution. In most OECD countries, the average union member has become relatively better off as union density has declined and union members have probably become less supportive of wage solidarity and redistributive government policies.     

High rural population density Africa – What are the growth requirements and who participates?

A large and increasing proportion of agricultural growth in Africa must come from continuous gains in land productivity in areas of high population density and hence with already relatively high yields. What that requires is analogous to the green revolution in Asia. Several features differentiate the African situation. Those include greater diversity in cropping pattern including a historically larger and more widespread tropical commodity export sector. The physical infrastructure in rural Africa is far inferior to that of most Asian countries. While the greater diversity of agriculture calls for a larger and more diverse institutional structure the reality is that the research systems, the ancillary education systems to spread innovation and the rural financial systems are generally greatly inferior to those of Asia at the beginning of the green revolution. Ethiopia’s record of a steady six to seven percent growth for agriculture and nearly halving of rural poverty demonstrates that with the right policies and investments a very poor country starting with poor physical and institutional infrastructure can bring a major contribution from agriculture growth to increased GDP and reduced poverty. As in Asia, the bulk of accelerated agricultural growth will come from small commercial farmers. They have sufficient farm income to reach or exceed the poverty level. Those are farms with, depending on the country, as little as 0.75 hectares to a few tens of hectares of land. They comprise up to half the rural population and produce on the order of 70–80 percent of agricultural output. They are in general not poor. The poor have inadequate land to reach the poverty level, initially with much underemployment, and with substantial non-farm employment. The primary driver of poverty reduction is the small commercial farmer spending on the order of half of increased income on nontradable, employment intensive goods and services from the rural non-farm sector.     

Long‐Term Earnings Inequality,Earnings Instability and Temporary Employment in Spain: 1993–2000

This article provides a longitudinal perspective on changes in Spanish male earnings inequality for the period 1993–2000 by decomposing the earnings covariance structure into its permanent and transitory parts. Cross‐sectional earnings inequality of male full‐time employees falls over the second half of the 1990s. Such decline was determined by a decrease in earnings instability and an increase of the permanent earnings component. Given the marked decline in temporary employment over the sample period, we also examine the effect of the type of contract on earnings variance components and find that workers on a fixed‐term contract face, on average, more instability than workers on a permanent contract. This evidence suggests that the decline in temporary employment is responsible for the decreasing earnings instability.     

Non-agricultural earnings in peri-urban areas of Tanzania: evidence from household survey data

This study draws on purposive survey data of approximately 600 households in peri-urban Tanzania to describe the degree and nature of non-farm diversification in these settings. With the exception of relatively dynamic cities such as Dar es Salaam and Arusha, overall non-farm incomes shares are not unambiguously higher than in rural areas as a whole. Non-farm income shares rise sharply and monotonically with quintiles defined in terms of per capita food consumption. In that sense the sector appears to offer an important route out of poverty. The evidence suggests that education, and access to infrastructure, are important determinants of non-farm incomes in peri-urban areas. Women appear to be poorly placed vis à vis the non-farm sector, even after controlling for education, age and other characteristics. Kinship and tribal affinities, and time devoted to communal activities, appear to deter entrepreneurial activity and non-farm employment, but trust in officials and public servants and strong heterogeneous village associations, are important in stimulating non-farm activity.     

Earnings Mobility and Long-Run Inequality: An Analysis Using Matched CPS Data

In this article we use matched cross sections from the Current Population Survey (CPS) to examine patterns of short-term earnings mobility for the period 1967-91, which we then employ to assess the impact of rising annual individual earnings inequality on inequality over a longer span, First, we find that less-educated individuals and blacks have more instability in their earnings than those who are more highly educated and non-black. Second, short-term mobility levels have not undergone major changes over the time span we examine. Third, our results suggest that long-run inequality (calculated over five years) rose in the latter half of the 1980s. Fourth, important differences exist across demographic groups in long-run inequality trends, with long-term inequality increasing most in the 1980s for less-educated males.     

English-Language Skills and the Earnings of Self-Employed Immigrants in the United States: A Note

Employing U.S. Census data, this study analyzes how English-language fluency affected the earnings of self-employed immigrant men in the 1980s. Our results suggest that English proficiency became a more important determinant of earnings for foreign-born entrepreneurs in 1990 compared with 1980, even while controlling for factors affecting selection into self-employment.     

Inequality and Union Membership: The Influence of Relative Earnings and Inequality Attitudes

Using surveys from the International Social Survey Programme covering the period 1985–2002 for seven European countries (West and East Germany, Sweden, Norway, Italy, the Netherlands and Great Britain), we examine the effect of relative earnings on union membership and show that union density is higher among workers in the intermediate earnings group than among low or high earners. Next, we examine the association of inequality attitudes with union membership and demonstrate that union membership is not only motivated by instrumental considerations related to relative earnings, but also by normative concerns about inequality. We interpret our findings suggesting that rising earnings inequality is in itself a source of union decline.     

Income diversification and entry barriers: evidence from the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia

Farm households diversify their income sources into off-farm wage employment motivated by low farm income and availability of surplus family labor, whereas they enter into off-farm self employment to earn an attractive return. Farm households have upward-sloping, although inelastic, off-farm labor supply curves. Therefore, increasing the availability of off-farm activities and improving the wage rate received by farm households can expand the economic activity of the Tigray Regional State. Due to entry barriers, relatively wealthy farm households may dominate the most lucrative rural non-farm activities such as masonry, carpentry and petty trade. Hence the underlying factors that hinder participation in non-farm activities such as credit constraints and lack of skill may have to be addressed through the provision of credit and technical training for the poor.     

Local impacts of a global crisis: Food price transmission,consumer welfare and poverty in Ghana

This paper takes a local perspective on global food price shocks by analyzing food price transmission between regional markets in Ghana. It also assesses the impacts of food price increases on various household groups. Taking the 2007–2008 global food crisis as an example, we show that prices for domestic grain products are highly correlated with world market prices. This is true both for products for which Ghana is highly import-dependent (e.g., rice) and the products for which Ghana is self-sufficient (e.g., maize). The econometric results also show that price transmission is high between regional producer markets and markets located in the country’s largest cities, and the distance between producer and consumer markets and the size of consumer markets matter in explaining the price transmission. The welfare analysis for households as consumers shows that the effect of world food prices appears relatively modest for the country as a whole due to relatively diverse consumption patterns within country. However, the national average hides important regional differences, both between regions and within different income groups. We find that the poorest of the poor—particularly those living in the urban areas—are hardest hit by high food prices. The negative effect of the food crisis is particularly strong in northern Ghana. The main explanations for this regional variation in the price effect is the different consumption patterns and much lower per capita income levels in the North of Ghana compared to other regions in the country.     

Income diversification,poverty traps and policy shocks in Côte d’Ivoire and Kenya

This paper presents evidence on the effects of two different sorts of policy shocks on observed income diversification patterns in rural Africa. In Côte d’Ivoire, households with poor endowments were less able to respond to attractive emerging on-farm and non-farm opportunities. Due to entry barriers to superior livelihood strategies, the benefits of exchange rate reform accrued disproportionately to households that were richer prior to devaluation. By contrast, food-for-work transfers to households in Kenya significantly reduced liquidity constraints, enabling project participants to pursue more lucrative livelihood strategies in non-farm activities and higher-return agricultural production patterns. Jointly, these two shocks underscore the importance of liquidity, market access and skill constraints to skilled non-farm income sources to dynamic poverty traps in rural Africa.     

The dynamics of livelihood diversification in post-famine Ethiopia

Based on data for almost 300 households this paper explores associations among income diversification, household perceptions of livelihood risks, and changes in consumption outcomes across two points in time in post-famine Ethiopia. Four key questions are addressed: i) To what extent did households emerging from the famine period with relatively higher income and calorie consumption levels also have a more diversified income base?; ii) Was higher income diversification in 1989 associated with higher income and consumption levels by 1994?; iii) Which households increased their share of income from non-cropping activities most during the inter-survey years?; and iv) Did household heads perceive a lack of non-farm income activities to be an important risk factor in famine vulnerability? We find that wealthier households tended to have more diversified income streams; those initially more diversified subsequently experienced a relatively greater increase in both income and calorie intake; households with a greater concentration of assets were more likely to fall in their relative outcome ranking (as were female-headed households); and, initially less diversified households subsequently realized greater gains in income diversification. We also find suggestive evidence that personal perceptions of risk factors guided subsequent diversification decisions.     

城镇化、收入分配与进口贸易

城镇化是中国经济持续发展的重要战略平台,影响着个人收入水平的变动及收入分配差距的变化,从而对进口贸易规模及结构产生影响。本文通过VAR模型的构建、Granger因果检验和脉冲图,对城镇化发展影响个人收入分配差距、个人收入分配差距影响中国进口贸易进行分析。研究结果表明：城镇化发展对个人收入分配差距具有长期、相互的影响作用,个人收入分配差距变化对进口贸易增长具有正态效应。应采取相应措施,通过个人收入分配媒介,发挥城镇化对进口贸易的刺激效能。     

Smallholder income and land distribution in Africa: implications for poverty reduction strategies

This paper provides a micro-level foundation for discussions of land allocation and its relation to income poverty within the smallholder sectors of Eastern and Southern Africa. Results are drawn from nationally-representative household surveys between 1990 and 2000 in five countries: Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Mozambique, and Zambia. The paper shows that farm sizes are declining over time; that roughly a quarter of the agricultural households in each country are virtually landless, controlling less than 0.10 hectares per capita, including rented land; that non-farm income shares are below 40% even for the households in the bottom land quartile; and that because of this, there is a strong relationship between access to land and household income, particularly for farm sizes below 1.0 hectares per capita. Land distribution within these small-farm sectors appears to be becoming more concentrated over time, and their Gini coefficients are comparable to those of many Asian countries at the time of their green revolutions. Lastly, the largest part of the variation in per capita farm sizes within the small-farm sectors is, in every country, predominantly within-village rather than between-village. Realistic discussions of poverty alleviation strategies in Africa need to be grounded in the context of these land distribution patterns and trends.     

收益与收益质量的分层研究

各层面对收益的不同认识以及所导出的收益质量问题是极为重要的实际问题。本文先以经济学和会计学辨析的视角说明收益的内涵及在理论与实践中的偏差，阐明全面收益理论的要点与意义。然后深入到收益质量内部，从经济收益的大小、会计收益与真实收益差异的客观性和人为因素导致的收益质量三个不同层面进行分析，最后就研究结论，运用统计分析的方法对我国上市公司收益质量进行实证描述与分析，本文旨在揭示收益质量不高的原因，找出辨析与提高收益与收益质量的方法与途径。     

Sex and Interoccupational Wage Differences in Israel

An examination of the influence of the sex identification of an occupation on earnings reveals that: (1) male occupations earn more than female occupations; (2) nonsegregated occupations tend to be more similar in earnings to female than to male occupations; (3) the majority of female occupations earn below the mean for occupations at each level of education; the inverse is true for male occupations; (4) men in female occupations earn less than they do in male occupations; and (5) women in male occupations do not consistently earn more than women in female occupations at comparable levels of education. Our data indicate that they tend to gravitate toward the lower earning male occupations. These findings support the hypothesis that in Israel, as elsewhere, occupational segregation is an important factor underlying earning differentials between women and men. Wage differentials are the result not only of differences in human capital resources, but also of unequal opportunities within the occupational structure. The division of labor by sex does not cause inequality—rather it permits the perpetuation of a system of social relations in which the work women do is allocated inferior status and economic rewards. The social forces which produce and sustain this reality are worthy of further investigation.     

Land inequality,government ideology and agricultural protection

This paper presents an empirical investigation of how agricultural land ownership inequality and government ideology (right-wing vs. left-wing) affect agricultural protection. Theoretically, the links are quite ambiguous, switching from positive to negative depending on the structure of the underlying political economic model – i.e. pressure groups vs. median voter approach. The data show, overall, that protection is decreasing in land inequality and with left-wing government orientation, but not in a linear fashion: left-wing governments tend to support agriculture in more unequal societies. There is some evidence that the relationship holds better in democracies than in dictatorships.     

非工资性收入分配：国有部门收入调控的新视角

本文基于"中国居民健康和营养调查"(CHNS)数据,研究所有制性质与非工资性收入分配问题。通过对中国非工资性收入结构和差异格局的长时段考察、研究发现,在津贴、补贴和医疗保险等非工资性收入方面,国有部门都明显高于其他部门,非工资性收入差异造成了我国不同所有制部门间收入差距的扩大,非工资性收入的不平等程度高于工资收入,而且呈不断上升的趋势。进一步利用Panel Data模型及Logit模型分析非工资性收入差异扩大的原因,研究表明,受教育程度、年龄和职业等因素对非工资性收入的影响程度较低,引起非工资性收入差异扩大的主要原因是所有制性质因素。因而,防止非工资性收入差异扩大,规范国有部门非工资性收入应成为当前收入分配制度改革的重点。     

Technological change,completeness of financing microstructures,and impact on well-being and income inequality

Financing microstructures are increasingly recognized as critical for promoting financial inclusion and improving overall well-being in developing countries. In practice, the digital transformation in finance has the potential to accelerate the optimal functioning of financing microstructures, including households' access to microfinance and microinsurance. Increased access to finance can lead to a reduction in income inequality and overall well-being for households. This paper investigates the impact of access to digital finance and financing microstructures on household well-being and the reduction of income inequality. To achieve this, we use a combination of propensity score matching, double difference, and smooth instrumental quantile regression as estimation methods with two periods of survey data. Specifically, the paper uses the FinScope consumer data (2016) and the Harmonized Living Standards Measurement Study (2018) from Togo in a comparative perspective. The results suggest that access to both digital finance and financing microstructure is a cultural game-changer that significantly improves overall household well-being and contributes to reducing income inequality.