Public Expenditure,Growth and Poverty Reduction in Rural Uganda

Abstract: Using district‐level data for 1992, 1995, and 1999, the study estimated effects of different types of government expenditure on agricultural growth and rural poverty in Uganda. The results reveal that government spending on agricultural research and extension improved agricultural production substantially. This type of expenditure had the largest measured returns to growth in agricultural production. Agricultural research and extension spending also had the largest assessed impact on poverty reduction. Government spending on rural roads also had a substantial marginal impact on rural poverty reduction. The impact of low‐grade roads such as feeder roads is larger than that of high‐grade roads such as murram and tarmac roads. Education's effects rank after agricultural research and extension, and roads. Government spending in health did not show a large impact on growth in agricultural productivity or a reduction in rural poverty. Additional investments in the northern region (a poor region) contribute the most to reducing poverty. However, it is the western region (a relatively well‐developed region) where most types of investment have highest returns in terms of increased agricultural productivity.     

Small Enterprise Growth and the Rural Investment Climate: Evidence from Tanzania*

Abstract: This paper analyzes characteristics of nonfarm enterprises, their employment growth patterns, and constraints in doing business in rural Tanzania. Using unique survey data, we describe a low‐return sector struggling to compete in a challenging business environment. However, about one‐third of rural enterprises are growing fast. Most enterprises engage in agricultural trade. Due to a rapidly growing agricultural sector in recent years, limiting demand‐side constraints, rural enterprise constraints in Tanzania mainly operate from the supply‐side, suggesting that in particular access to finance, road infrastructure and rural cell phone communication is associated with employment growth. A major finding is that subjective and objective measurements of business constraints are broadly comparable. We discuss a number of factors that would help to unleash the full potential of private sector‐led growth in rural areas. Marginal improvements of the rural investment climate matter for growth.     

Constraints in Access to and Demand for Rural Credit: Evidence from Uganda

Abstract: Like in most developing countries, Uganda's financial sector is largely underdeveloped and concentrated in urban areas, leaving the majority of the agricultural producers in the rural population with no access. However, agriculture forms a significant part of the lives of the rural households, who constitute about 85 per cent of the population. This study uses the Uganda household surveys conducted in 1992/93 and 1999/2000 to shed some light on access to, and the characteristics of demand for credit among the rural population. We employ the probit, tobit and multinomial logit model estimations and we analyse demand for credit and find that Uganda's credit market is highly segmented. The rural peasant producers are largely served by relatives/friends and self‐help credit associations and their loan applications are less likely to succeed, and of those that do, smaller loans are granted. The educated and the young are more likely to demand credit while women are less likely to, and to apply for smaller loans. Therefore, while government's agricultural modernization policy considers credit as an important input to its success and as the government plans to roll out the ‘wealth‐for‐all’ programme, more needs to be done to get credit to the sector and to ensure that it can be usefully utilized. Programmes to promote skills and vocational training to enhance production and training in appropriate use of credit are also needed.     

The economic development approach to legal reform for rural women: A methodological alternative

Legislative efforts to promote rural women's economic productivity have focused on strategies for improving access to and control over agricultural resources. Women make up 50 per cent of the world's farmers, but in many developing countries they are unable to hold or manage productive resources in their own name. Most legal proposals recommend family law reform as the entry point for change. This article argues for a broader approach. All the laws that affect rural economic development should be evaluated and linked in ways that promote rural women's integration into the economic mainstream. In agriculture the‐most important legislation is natural resource management, local government development and agricultural development and agricultural investment laws, including research, intellectual property protection, cooperatives, banking and marketing. Each law should be assessed from the perspective of four generic development attributes: how it contributes to women's representation in policymaking; what economic benefits it provides; whether it facilitates the evolution of organisational structures to help women attract capital; and whether there are clear systems for enforcing rights and therefore minimising risk. Next, the process is reversed to determine how the laws collectively support each of the four areas. This methodology allows the researcher to tease out and rearrange essential elements of a comprehensive enabling environment that provide a sufficient level of institutional support in all four areas across the entire spectrum of agricultural development.     

由温饱到小康——从中央“一号”文件看我国农村生产力的解放与发展

改革开放30年来，由于家庭联产承包责任制的推行、农村商品经济的发展，以及农业基础的进一步加强，我国农村生产力获得了解放和发展，促进了农业发展，增加了农民收入，改变了农村面貌，促进了我国社会主叉新农村建设。     

Agricultural Technology, Crop Income, and Poverty Alleviation in Uganda

This paper evaluates the ex post impact of adopting improved groundnut varieties on crop income and poverty in rural Uganda. The study utilizes cross-sectional data of 927 households, collected in 2006, from seven districts in Uganda. Using propensity score matching methods, we find that adopting improved groundnut varieties (technology) significantly increases crop income and reduces poverty. The positive and significant impact on crop income is consistent with the perceived role of new agricultural technologies in reducing rural poverty through increased farm household income. This study supports broader investment in agriculture research to address vital development challenges. Reaching the poor with better technologies however requires policy support for improving extension efforts, access to seeds and market outlets that simulate adoption.     

Growth Enhancement Support Scheme (GESS) and Farmers’ Fertilizer Use in Rural Nigeria

Fertilizer use in Nigeria is estimated at 13 kg/ha, which is far below the 200 kg/ha recommended by the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO). The objective of this investigation was to identify the determinant factors of farmers’ participation in Nigeria's Growth Enhancement Support Scheme (GESS). In addition, we determined the impact of the GESS on fertilizer use in rural areas. A total of 1,200 rural farmers were sampled across the six geopolitical zones of Nigeria. Results from the use of a recursive bivariate probit model indicated that GESS significantly impacted on the access and usage of fertilizer among the rural farmers; and that contact with extension agents, ownership of mobile phones, power for charging phone batteries, value output, mobile network coverage, ability to read and write were positive determinants of rural farmers’ participation in the GESS; whereas increased distance to registration and collection centers, and cultural constraints to married women reduced farmers’ tendency to participate in the GESS. The findings suggest that farmers’ participation in the GESS is a critical factor for raising fertilizer use in Nigeria. This implies that food security in sub‐Saharan Africa can be achieved by increasing the participation of rural farmers in the GESS.     

地理标志农产品对城乡收入差距的影响研究——基于全国30个省份面板数据的实证分析

在剔除三部门重合地理标志农产品后，基于2010—2018年中国30个省份的面板数据，构建空间杜宾模型和面板门槛回归模型，实证研究地理标志农产品对城乡收入差距影响的空间溢出效应和非线性影响。研究结果显示，城乡收入差距的空间集聚特征明显，且具有显著的正向空间自相关性；地理标志农产品能够抑制本省域及邻近省域城乡收入差距的扩大；随着经济发展水平的提高、交通基础设施水平的提升，地理标志农产品缩小城乡收入差距的作用逐渐增强。     

Agricultural Productivity and Economic Growth: Role of Tax Revenues and Infrastructures

To encourage economic growth in a developing economy, higher agricultural productivity has been believed to enhance the manufacturing sector's development, which provides the transition into industrialization. Although this positive linkage between agricultural productivity and economic growth has been judged to be incorrect, based upon the comparative advantage argument in a model of small-open economies by Matsuyama (1992), this article revisits the linkage by extending Matsuyama's model by introducing the revenue-generating effect, which is missing in his model. As agriculture is an important source of taxation in an early stage of economic development, higher agricultural productivity generates more tax revenues and facilitates spending on infrastructure. By introducing government taxation and infrastructure expenditure, we show that under proper conditions, higher agricultural productivity creates a positive growth effect via the revenue generation that dominates the negative growth effect through the comparative advantage. Moreover, introducing infrastructure expenditure may shift the manufacturing sector's original comparative disadvantage into comparative advantage, thereby enabling a trapped economy to take off and eventually industrialize. From the early stages of economic development in Japan, Taiwan, and Korea, we can quantitatively assess an obvious net positive effect of agricultural productivity upon labor allocation and economic growth.     

Does China Transfer Productivity Enhancing Technology to Sub‐Saharan Africa? Evidence from Manufacturing Firms*

Abstract: This paper considers whether trade between China and sub‐Saharan Africa results in productivity‐enhancing technology transfers to sub‐Saharan African manufacturing firms. As trade flows between countries potentially results in interactions that lead to technological improvements in the production of goods and services, we parameterize the level of total factor productivity for African manufacturing firms as a function of foreign direct investment flow, and for the country in which it operates, trade openness with China, and its interaction with foreign direct investment. With micro‐level data on manufacturing firms in five sub‐Saharan African countries, we estimate the parameters of firm‐level production functions between 1992 and 2004. Our parameter estimates reveal that across the firms and countries in our sample, there is no relationship between productivity‐enhancing foreign direct investment and trade with China. In addition, increasing trade openness with China has no effect on the growth rate of total factor productivity. To the extent that total factor productivity and its growth is a crucial determinant of economic growth and living standards in the long run, our results suggest that increasing trade openness with China is not a long‐run source of higher living standards for sub‐Saharan Africa.     

Does Allocation of Public Spending Matter in Poverty Reduction? Evidence from Thailand*

The present paper uses a panel dataset to estimate the marginal returns to different types of government expenditure on agricultural growth and rural poverty reduction in Thailand. The study finds that additional government spending on agricultural research provides the largest return in terms of agricultural productivity and has the second largest impact on rural poverty reduction. Increased investment in rural electrification has the largest poverty reduction impact, mainly through improved nonfarm employment. Rural education has the third largest impact on both productivity and poverty reduction. Irrigation has a positive impact on agricultural productivity, but regional variation is considerable. Government spending on rural roads has no significant impact on agricultural productivity and its poverty reduction impact ranks last among all investment alternatives considered. Additional investment in the Northeast Region has a greater impact on poverty reduction than in other regions.     

Soil and water conservation investments and rural development in China

This study uses a unique set of annual provincial data on soil and water conservation (SWC) investments during the period 1989–2005 to estimate the impact of such investments on the extent and severity of erosion, the growth rate of agricultural gross domestic product (GDP) and rural poverty reduction in China. We find that SWC investments made by local governments have a significant negative impact on the extent of erosion and (in recent years) the severity of erosion, whereas SWC investments made by farm households until recently had a significant negative effect on the severity of erosion. In its turn, the severity of erosion is found to have a significant negative impact on agricultural GDP. Estimation of the impact of the extent of erosion on agricultural GDP provides mixed results. Based on these results, we derive that one RMB invested in SWC by local governments increases agricultural GDP in 2002 with 0.84–1.25 RMB. Finally, we find that agricultural GDP has a significant negative impact on the rural poverty rate. The resulting indirect effect of SWC investment on rural poverty reduction, however, is small compared to other types of public investment. We conclude that (local) government investments in SWC do not only serve environmental goals, but also make a non-negligible contribution to agricultural growth and rural poverty reduction.     

Convergence in rural development: evidence from India

We analyze state-level data of rural India for the period 1973–1993. The gain in agricultural productivity as measured by a Tornqvist–Theil TFP index shows wide divergence across states over time. While there has been an overall decline in farm–non-farm employment ratio over the entire period, it has shown an increasing trend in some states from the second half of the 1980s. We explore the issue of convergence in rural development that takes into account both the increase in agricultural productivity and non-farm employment in rural areas. We find that there is a strong tendency to converge over time to the level of Kerala, the leading state in the initial period. The speed of convergence is in the range of other studies for convergence in agriculture only.     

缩小城乡收入差距的建议

近几年来,由于我国城乡居民收入差距逐步扩大,为有效的解决我国城乡收入差距,本文提出从发展农业产业化,提高农业生产率、有序组织农业剩余劳动力的转移,增加农民收入,进一步发挥农村工业对安置农村剩余劳力的重要作用、从根本上入手,解决农民负担过重的问题、破除城乡二元体制,根本消除城乡差别的建议,来缩小城乡收入差距。     

Leave behind or migrate? Evidence from a field experiment in China concerning the impact of being left behind/migrating status on children's behaviour and preferences

With the great economic and social development achieved in China in the past 40 years of reform and opening up has come the extensive flow of China's very large rural labour force between urban and rural areas and among regions, as well as populations of left-behind children and migrant children who cannot be ignored. In this paper, four populations—non-left-behind children in rural areas, left-behind children in rural areas, migrant children in urban areas, and local children in urban areas—were recruited in a large-scale field experiment that included the dictator game, ultimatum game, trust game, public goods game, coin-tossing task, intertemporal choice task, a calculation contest task, and a gambling task. Both being left behind and migrating had a negative effect on the children's prosocial behaviour (including fairness, trust, trustworthiness, cooperation, and honesty) and economic decision-making (including time and competition preferences). Moreover, the effect on migrant children was relatively greater, but this effect dissipated progressively as time since migration increased. Additionally, shorter migration distances were associated with a decreased effect of migration on migrant children, and having access to one parent had a positive effect on left-behind children.     

国家现代农业产业园建设与共同富裕

促进农村共同富裕是当前扎实推动共同富裕最艰巨最繁重的任务,2017年以来正式启动的国家现代农业产业园建设具有强农富农使命,但其对地区共同富裕的影响尚不明确。文章以“总体富裕”和“成果共享”两个维度构建地区共同富裕指标体系,使用2015—2020年中国地级市面板数据,利用国家现代农业产业园建设作为准自然实验,从农业生产效率和劳动力转移就业角度研究了国家现代农业产业园建设对农村共同富裕的影响。研究发现,国家现代农业产业园建设有助于推进地区共同富裕的实现,尤其是中西部地区和处于经济发展中间水平地区。同时,国家现代农业产业园建设的“成果共享”效应大于“总体富裕”效应。进一步地,在机制检验方面,文章发现,国家现代农业产业园建设提高了地区农业全要素生产率,促进了农民群体就业从第一产业向第三产业转移,提升了弱势群体收入,从而促进了发展包容性,切实推进了共同富裕。因此,文章提出：加快国家现代农业产业园总量扩容,扩大覆盖面,严格考核,切实发挥其包容性发展效应;加快形成省市区联动的现代农业产业园建设体系,为农村共同富裕注入持续动力;现代农业产业园建设应注重农业的高质量发展和外延式发展;各地区应因地制宜依托...     

The Trickle‐down Effect of Fintech Development: From the Perspective of Urbanization

The emergence of a digital divide or a lack of internet access may hinder urbanization and adversely affect growth. However, fintech development can help to improve the accessibility and affordability of financial services, particularly for sections of the population formerly excluded from such services. Improved access is expected to stimulate the growth essential for promoting urbanization, possibly alleviating the negative impacts of a digital divide and creating a trickle‐down effect. This paper is among the first to investigate the effect of fintech development on urbanization, as indicated by labor transfer from agricultural to non‐agricultural sectors in China. It is found that: (i) the digital divide hindered, while fintech development contributed to urbanization; (ii) the positive effect of fintech development on urbanization affects individuals both with and without access to the internet, yielding the so‐called trickle‐down effect and thus helping to alleviate the negative consequences of a digital divide; and (iii) regarding transmission mechanisms, fintech development helps to generate additional jobs and raise income in non‐agricultural sectors, stimulating urbanization even for those without access to the internet.     

Rural centralized residences and the health of the acting heads of rural households: The case of China

The rural centralized residence (RCenR) has been adopting to promote rural development in 24 provinces in China. Acting heads of rural households are older and their health is worse than average rural residents. However, their health has greater externalities since they play a central role in families and in daily village operations. It is therefore important to investigate the causal effect of RCenR on the health of the acting heads, which remains econometrically underexplored. This study controls for cross-prefecture contiguous-villages group fixed effects and uses the expected once-off government housing subsidy as the instrumental variable to estimate the causal effect of RCenR on the health of acting heads. It is found that RCenR significantly improves acting heads' health through increased income, reduced strenuous agricultural activities, greater use of clean energy and clean water, as well as easier access to local medical services. These findings are important because they can guide developing countries to improve their rural development policies.     

组合工艺在农村饮水工程中的应用

根据我国农村微污染水源水的水质情况和农村饮水工程中存在的问题．并结合考虑农村的实际情况．提出了涡旋混凝低脉动沉淀给水一曝气生物滤池一臭氧活性炭联用组合工艺来处理我国的农村微污染水源水。     

Ecology and development

There is an increasing realization, world‐wide and in Southern Africa, that conservation and development are compatible.

Because human communities in the less developed rural areas are dependent on a renewable group of resources, including soil, water and forests, it is imperative that land use systems that protect these resources are introduced.

The predominance of subsistence agriculture in these areas is the most difficult syndrome of under‐development. An overall rural development strategy is required that integrates human development with resources management Where the population carrying capacity of the land has already been exceeded, a process of rapid villagization/urbanization is required. Village/urban growth and agricultural development require a carefully co‐ordinated programme of land capability analysis and planning, as well as active investment in infrastructure and the introduction of appropriate technologies and institutions.