The Impact of Public Works Programme on Child Labour in Ethiopia

Given the conventional wisdom that poverty and associated income shocks are the fundamental causes of child labour, from a policy perspective, there is a perception that social safety net programmes can play a vital role in reducing child labour. While there is extensive evidence that shows the prevalence of child labour is low among beneficiaries of conditional cash transfer programmes, the impact of workfare programs on child labour has been rarely investigated in the economics literature. This paper addresses the issue by evaluating the impact of the public works component of the Productive Safety Net Programme implemented in Ethiopia in 2005. The programme aims to help poor households to build assets and develop resilience to shocks through employment in public projects. Results from child fixed effects estimations show that children in programme beneficiary households are significantly less likely than their counterparts in non‐beneficiary households to be involved in child labour. The findings suggest that, if well targeted, even safety net programmes that do not primarily target child outcomes can be useful in addressing child labour problems.     

Rural Women's Survivalist Livelihoods and State Interventions in Ga‐Ramogale Village,Limpopo Province

Abstract: Women constitute the majority of rural dwellers experiencing the worst effects of poverty while carrying the responsibility of securing a living for their households. Historically, rural women have practised a multiplicity of livelihoods that have always remained survivalist and less effective in generating cash income. However, well‐intended state interventions through Poverty Alleviation Programme (PAP) projects for women's empowerment have instead removed women from their practice of survivalist livelihoods without offering them the necessary enabling conditions to establish independent biographies for practice of ‘modern’ cash generating strategies. Based on a systematic sample of 177 households and interviews with women in Ga‐Ramogale, this article concludes that PAP projects have, rather than empowering women for sustainable participation in rural development, deepened their poverty and deprivation by enticing them away from the practice of livelihoods for which they had developed experience, skills and knowledge over years, and thereby effectively engendering increased reliance on dependency‐oriented livelihoods.     

Unemployment in Africa: A Fractional Integration Approach

This paper estimates long‐memory models to analyse the stochastic behaviour of unemployment in eleven African countries (Botswana, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mauritius, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia) from the 1960s until 2010. The empirical results provide very strong evidence of lack of mean reversion in all series under examination. This suggests that hysteresis models are the most relevant for the African experience (not surprisingly, given the rigidities in their labour markets). Therefore in such countries shocks hitting the unemployment series will have permanent effects, and policy makers should take appropriate action to reverse the effects of negative shocks.     

Non‐farm Income Diversification in Rural Ghana: Patterns and Determinants

Abstract: Evidence abounds in the rural livelihoods literature that rural households do not only receive a significant proportion of their incomes from non‐farm sources, but also it is a significant source of employment for rural folks. This paper examines the pattern and determinants of non‐farm income diversification in rural Ghana. Results show that off‐farm income constituted 43 percent of rural household income in 2005/6. Female‐headed households tend to have larger off‐farm income shares compared to male‐headed households. Non‐farm income shares followed the same gender pattern albeit less pronounced. Unlike in Latin America and Asia, in rural Ghana, non‐farm self‐employment income is more important than non‐farm wage‐employment income. Regression results show that the gender composition of households, age, education, and access to credit, electricity and markets are important determinants of multiple non‐farm activities and non‐farm income. The findings call for strategies that can help rural households maximize the benefits from income diversification.     

Vulnerability of households to health shocks: an Indonesian study

We examine the effect of illness and injury shocks on work hours and household consumption in Indonesia. Using indices of activities of daily living to measure health shocks, we find that both labour hours and household consumption are influenced by health shocks to household heads. Further, farm households seem to be more seriously affected than non-farm households by health shocks. However, the magnitude of the health effect on household consumption is small, implying that even farm households are well protected on average by the presence of formal and informal risk-coping mechanisms.     

Food poverty,hunger and household production in rural Eastern Cape households

More than two decades since the advent of democracy in South Africa, the place of small-scale agriculture in rural development, poverty alleviation and food security remains ambiguous and highly contested. However, there is now some new evidence that official income poverty estimates in South Africa may be underestimating the contribution of rural, land-based livelihoods when measuring household well-being. This paper aims to explore this possibility further by identifying how household production activities are associated with improved food security among rural Eastern Cape households in the former homelands. The analysis is based on data from Statistics South Africa’s 2008/9 Living Conditions Survey and its annual General Household Surveys. In adopting a food poverty lens, the findings suggest that hunger levels are lower among farming households in the Eastern Cape even though a higher percentage of these households (relative to non-farming households) live below the national food poverty line. The paper concludes by discussing some implications for policy.     

The Scramble in Africa: Reorienting Rural Livelihoods

Structural adjustment and market liberalization policies of the past 15 years have accelerated deagrarianization in sub-Saharan Africa. Peasant producers have veered away from production of traditional export crops and commercial staple foods in rural areas remote from roads and urban markets. Nonagricultural income diversification has been substituted in the search for much-needed cash earnings. Citing recent village survey evidence, this paper argues that the economic restructuring of African smallholders' work lives has been accompanied by deep-rooted social change. Divisions of labor and decision-making power within peasant households have altered and wealth differentiation between households has deepened. Depeasantization of the countryside is currently taking place, as rural household members of both genders “scramble” for viable livelihoods.     

Embracing the Global in Thailand: Activism and Pragmatism in an Era of Deagrarianization

Today, few “farmers” in Thailand rely solely on agriculture to meet their needs. Rural households are dividing their time between farm and nonfarm activities, constructing livelihoods that are increasingly hybrid, both spatially and sectorally. Many of the new opportunities also have an important “global” element. This paper contends that embracing the global is essential for many households who are land-short, farming-shy and consumption-inclined. This offers the prospect of a profound shift in the trajectory of rural change in Thailand as these processes intersect.     

The Botswana district roads labour‐intensive improvement and maintenance programme — A summary

Two major themes of Botswana's Fifth and Sixth Development Plans (1976‐1991) have been the creation of employment and rural development As one means of fulfilling both objectives, the Government of Botswana explicity decided that labour‐intensive methods should be used by District Councils to improve and maintain the 13 000 kilometres of non‐gazetted roads for which they were responsible. To this end, between 1980 and 1982, a pilot project was carried out to examine the potential of labour‐intensive methods. In 1982, following its evaluation of the pilot project, the Ministry of Local Government and Lands decided that the methods developed during the pilot project should be replicated throughout Botswana. As a result, District Council Roads Units have been established in all districts of Botswana. Over 2 000 people are employed.     

School attendance and economic shocks: Evidence from rural Zimbabwe

Unpredicted shocks such as weather, pests or price changes affect agricultural households negatively or positively. The shocks have two opposite effects (income and substitution) on parents’ investments in the human capital of their children, and it is not predictable from theory whether the income effect or the substitution effect of a shock has a greater impact on the investments. Therefore, it is unknown whether human capital investments (i.e. sending children to school rather than having them work) are procyclical or countercyclical. In this paper we show how hyperinflation may affect investments in the education of children by their parents using three data-sets from Zimbabwe. We find that human capital investments are countercyclical (the substitution effect dominates) in rural areas of Zimbabwe during a shock. Therefore, policymakers in Zimbabwe need to be worried about decreased schooling of children during positive shocks in the rural areas.     

The main findings of the district pilot project of labour‐intensive road construction and maintenance in Botswana and the implications for similar projects in South Africa

Unemployment has been identified as one of the main problems confronting South Africa. Recently, in order to improve rural infrastructure and create employment, several pilot projects of rural road construction have been initiated in South Africa. In such a context it is considered that attention should be drawn to a pilot project carried out some time ago in Botswana to examine the potential of labour‐intensive methods in the construction and maintenance of rural roads.

The main conclusion of the pilot project was that labour‐intensive methods were viable, although attention had to be paid to several critical factors. In 1982, following its evaluation of the pilot project, the Government of Botswana decided that over the next five years the technical and organisational methods developed during the pilot project should be replicated throughout Botswana.

After a brief survey of the background to the project, the paper summarises several important features of the pilot project and its main findings. The paper closes with some comments on the implications of this pilot project for those currently underway in South Africa.     

Trading places. Case studies of the labour market experience of women in rural in-migrant households

This paper reports on some of the findings of a recent study on the employment impact of moving to a rural area. A case study approach is used to elucidate the choices/constraints/compromises encountered by women in in-migrant households to rural and semi-rural parts of the East Midlands, Great Britain. Rural labour markets are quantitatively and qualitatively different from urban labour markets and, while some of the surveyed in-migrant women managed to find jobs following their move, they often experienced downward occupational mobility; others withdrew from the labour market. A number of policy recommendations are also made to improve labour market access.     

HIV/Aids and land: case studies from Kenya,Lesotho and South Africa

Recent research conducted in Lesotho, Kenya and South Africa has revealed that HIV/Aids will seriously impact on a range of land issues as a direct result of very high infection rates in these countries. HIV/Aids will affect different forms of land use, the functioning of land administration systems, land rights of women and orphans as well as the poor generally, and inheritance practices and norms. The epidemic not only affects the productivity of the infected, but also diverts the labour of the household and extended family away from other productive and reproductive activities as they take care of the sick. Affected households fall below the social and economic threshold of vulnerability and ‘survivability’, leaving the survivors – mainly the young and elderly – with limited resources to quickly regain a sustainable livelihood. This indicates the importance of effective land administration systems and of land rights as HIV/Aids impacts on the terms and conditions on which households and individuals hold, use and transact land. This has a particular resonance for women and children's rights, which, in the context of rural power relations that are themselves coming under increasing pressure from the epidemic, are especially vulnerable to being usurped. Thus, the impact of HIV/Aids on land raises complex and sensitive issues for land policies and programmes, particularly if they are intended to underpin rural development and sustainable livelihoods.     

Effects of wildlife crop raiding on the livelihoods of arable farmers in Khumaga,Boteti sub-district,Botswana

Human–wildlife interaction in Boteti district, Botswana is critical. Wild animals destroy agricultural products and threaten human lives. This paper, therefore, assesses the economic effects of wildlife crop raiding on the livelihoods of arable farmers in Khumaga, Boteti sub-district, Botswana. A total of 119 arable farmers were interviewed using open and closed-ended structured questionnaires in this study. Key informant interviews were also conducted through purposive selection. Findings indicate that wild animals destroy agricultural production at Khumaga leading to food insecurity; sometimes farmers can lose the entire field in single elephant crop raiding. The elephant (Loxodonta africana) was reported by respondents to be a problem animal. In conclusion, decision-makers should ensure that farmers at Khumaga are protected and inducted with mitigation strategies that are effective against wildlife to improve arable farmer’s livelihoods and conservation efforts at Khumaga village and in Botswana.     

Weather shocks,poverty and crime in 18th-century Savoy

Did weather shocks increase interpersonal conflict in early modern Europe? I address this question by exploiting year-to-year seasonal variations in temperature and detailed crime data assembled from Savoyard criminal procedures over the period 1749–92. I find that temperature shocks had a positive and significant effect on the level of property crimes, but a negative and significant effect on violent crimes. I further document how seasonal migration helped to increase the coping capacity of local communities. Indeed, migrant labour both brought in remittances that supplemented communities’ resources, as well as temporarily relieved impoverished households of the burden of feeding these workers. I show that while temperature shocks were strongly associated with an increase in property crime rates, the effect was much lower in provinces with high levels of seasonal migration. I provide historical evidence demonstrating that the inflow of remittances may have driven this relationship.     

Unemployment Dynamics, and Propagation of Aggregate and Reallocation Shocks in the Netherlands

This paper models the propagation at the macro level of four types of shocks using the SVAR approach. Time series data for the Netherlands on job creation, job destruction, the number of vacancies and labour supply are used to identify aggregate demand and supply shocks, and reallocation demand and supply shocks as different sources of unemployment dynamics. Each of these four types of shocks appears to have at least some influence on unemployment both in the short and long run. The long run influence of the aggregate labour supply shock is estimated to be very limited. It indicates that additional labour supply is almost fully absorbed by labour demand in the long run.     

Child Labour in the Philippines: Determinants and Effects

This paper analyses the supply-side socioeconomic determinants of child labour in the Philippines using data from the National Household Survey and the Labour Force Survey of the Philippines. The research methodology is that of a sequential probit model which assumes that household decisions are made in a hierarchical manner. Using this model, the impact of various household and economic characteristics on the probability of child labour is estimated. The findings highlight specific populations that should be targeted, for example, single working mothers in urban areas and poor households in rural areas. Working towards elimination of child labour will involve a multi-angled policy approach with policies complementing each other.     

The role of land-based strategies in rural livelihoods: The contribution of arable production,animal husbandry and natural resource harvesting in communal areas in South Africa

The majority of South Africa's rural population resides in the former homelands. Although cash from urban and government sources is the mainstay of the rural economy in many areas, the multiple and diverse livelihood base of rural households is not widely recognised. This diversity includes the land-based strategies of arable farming, livestock husbandry and consumption and trade in natural resources. This article examines recent and emerging literature from a livelihood perspective in terms of the role and value of each of these three land-based livelihood sectors. We conclude that the contribution of land-based activities to rural livelihoods is important in both financial and social terms, and is probably greater than previously appreciated within the whole gamut of livelihood strategies adopted by rural households, including transfers from formal employment and state pensions. We examine the policy implications of this for land and agrarian reform in South Africa.