From Linear Fuel Switching to Multiple Cooking Strategies: A Critique and Alternative to the Energy Ladder Model

Promoting sustainable development requires evaluating the technical and policy options that will facilitate the adoption and use of energy efficient and less polluting cooking stoves and practices. The transition from traditional to modern fuels and devices has been explained by the “energy ladder” model that suggests that with increasing affluence, a progression is expected from traditional biomass fuels to more advanced and less polluting fuels. In this paper we evaluate the energy ladder model utilizing data from a four-year (1992–96) case study of a village in Mexico and from a large-scale survey from four states of Mexico. We show that an alternate “multiple fuel” model of stove and fuel management based on the observed pattern of household accumulation of energy options, rather than the simple progression depicted in the traditional energy ladder scenario, more accurately depicts cooking fuel use patterns in rural households. The “multiple fuel” model integrates four factors demonstrated to be essential in household decision making under conditions of resource scarcity or uncertainty: (a) economics of fuel and stove type and access conditions to fuels, (b) technical characteristics of cookstoves and cooking practices; (c) cultural preferences; and (d) health impacts. This model also allows better estimates of the expected fuelwood demand and indoor air pollution in rural households.     

The adoption and use of mobile payment: Determinants and relationship with bank access☆

This study aims to answer two questions: What determines the adoption and use of mobile payment? What is the relationship between mobile payment and access to traditional bank services? By using representative survey data in rural China, we apply a hurdle model with 2SLS and find that consumers with better access to bank services are more likely to adopt mobile payment. However, after adoption, the less often the consumers visit banks because of distance or social constraints, the more they use mobile payment to complement bank services. Younger, better educated households with higher income and more smart phones are more likely to adopt and use mobile payment. Among these characteristics, age has the largest marginal effect while income has the least. Households in the agricultural sector are least likely to adopt and use mobile payment. We also find that awareness of neighbors' use of non-cash payment has a substantial positive effect.     

Debt and household finance: evidence from the Financial Diaries

The Financial Diaries data-set is a unique, new set of year-long daily income, expense and financial transactions for households from three different areas of South Africa. These data show that over-indebted households (those that spend 20 per cent or more of their gross monthly income on debt) do not fit one homogeneous profile. Formal debt tends to be responsible for over-indebtedness in the urban areas, while in the rural areas the cause tends to be informal debt. In the urban areas high indebtedness is more prevalent among medium-income and high-income households, whereas in the rural areas it occurs at all income levels. High indebtedness in grant-dependent rural households tends to be persistent, whereas in wage-dependent urban households it is often short-lived. These findings present a new financial picture of poor rural populations that is unlikely to be touched by recent policy measures to address over-indebtedness.     

Urban Shopping Patterns in Indonesia and Their Implications for Small Farmers

In developing countries, the expansion of supermarkets and other modern food retailers has raised concerns about the potential impact on traditional retailers and fruit and vegetable farmers. Will small farmers, in particular, be squeezed out of this growing, remunerative market by the quality standards imposed by supermarkets? In an attempt to answer this question, we analyse data from a stratified random sample of 1,180 urban households in Indonesia. We find that only a small share of fruits and vegetables are purchased from modern outlets, even among high-income urban households. On the basis of the relation between income and shopping patterns in our data, we project that even after 15 years of income growth, supermarkets will account for less than 40% of urban food spending. The impact of supermarket standards on small farmers may be less dramatic than has been feared.     

Food Demand Characteristics in Uganda: Estimation and Policy Relevance

Uganda was highly successful in reducing poverty over the past two decades but made little progress towards household food security. This underlines the need for designing food security interventions customised for household‐specific needs and behaviours. This study estimates Ugandan household demand behaviour with a focus on food consumption paying particular attention to household‐specific characteristics. The results show that preferences to increase calorie‐dense staple consumption, likely associated with food energy deficiency, extend far beyond the percentage of rural Ugandans officially deemed poor. Price elasticities indicate that poor rural households are largely well positioned to compensate staple price increases by substitution as long as they are not already concentrated on the cheapest foods. This flexibility applies less to urban households. The estimated demand elasticities generally vary widely between rural and urban households and depend on expenditure levels. Household‐specific characteristics have significant, sometimes pronounced, influences on demand, as do seasons and regions. The results reflect highly differentiated demand behaviour, which can be utilised to improve the design and evaluation of food security interventions.     

Migration and the changing social economy of Windhoek,Namibia

This study focuses on the economic strategies employed by poor urban households in Windhoek, Namibia. It is based on the findings of a household questionnaire survey conducted in Windhoek and qualitative case studies collected in both Windhoek and the rural northern regions of Namibia. The central argument of this article is that rural–urban migration in Namibia is not unilinear but involves a complex relationship between rural and urban households that is fostered by high levels of personal mobility between the rural and urban settings. These close and complex social linkages between the rural and urban sectors make it possible for people to withstand the economic difficulties associated with limited employment in the formal urban economy. Further, this study shows that a key survival factor for urban households is in fact food that is produced in the rural areas.     

Female education and child mortality in Indonesia

This paper uses a sample of 6620 women from the 1994 Indonesian Demographic and Health Survey to examine the relationship between female education and child mortality in Indonesia. Female education is measured in terms of both years of education and literacy. Both primary education and secondary schooling significantly decrease the probability of child death, while literacy plays an insignificant role. When the sample is divided into urban and rural locations, primary and secondary education are significant in both areas in reducing the likelihood of a mother experiencing child mortality. The benefits of public and private infrastructure appear to differ in rural and urban areas. The results confirm that investment in female human capital lowers the probability of child mortality.     

Transport expenditure and affordability: The cost of being mobile

Measuring and understanding the transport expenditure patterns of households and individuals is critically important for formulating pro-poor transport policies, as well as for monitoring their effectiveness. This paper reviews evidence on transport expenditure and affordability in South Africa, focusing especially on low-income and mobility constrained persons. The results indicate that a person's location along the urban–rural continuum significantly affects both their transport expenditure levels and the perceived severity of their transport affordability problems. Public transport users in displaced urban settlements and isolated deep rural locations and medium-income car commuters in suburbs and urban townships face the highest transport expenditure and affordability problems. Disabled and elderly people were found to have similar expenditure patterns and perceptions as travellers at large. Spatially targeted interventions in both transport supply and land use policy are suggested to address transport affordability problems in South Africa.     

The Effect of Social Capital on Fertiliser Adoption: Evidence from Rural Tanzania

Do the characteristics of local social structures affect fertiliseradoption among rural households? This paper extends the modelof technology adoption of Feder and Slade (1984) to incorporatesocial capital, and then tests the model with household datafrom two agro-ecological zones in rural Tanzania. Probit estimatesof the model show that the probability of adoption of improvedfertiliser in 1994–5 in the Central Plateau region isincreasing in land under cultivation, cumulative adoption patterns,ethnically based social affiliations, the adoption of improvedseeds, the availability of credit and extension services andthe average years of residence in the village. In the Plainsregion, this probability is increasing in land under cultivation,ethnically based social affiliations and consultative norms.Overall, these results, which are robust after testing for thelikely reverse causality of land under cultivation, supportthe finding that ethnically based and participatory social affiliationsact as forms of social capital in the adoption decision.     

Rural–urban differences in parental spending on children's primary education in Malawi

Using Malawian data, this paper answers two interrelated questions: are there rural–urban differences in the factors that influence the probability that a household spends or does not spend on own children's education; and are there rural–urban differences in the factors that affect educational expenditure if a household decides to spend? Computed elasticities indicate that spending on education by rural households is more sensitive to changes in income compared with urban households, suggesting that spending on education in rural areas is a luxury good. In both areas, a mother's employment and education has a larger impact on spending compared with those of a father. Urban households compared with their rural counterparts are more sensitive to the quality of access to primary schools. We find no evidence of gender bias in school spending in urban areas, but rural households exhibit bias in favour of boys.     

农户偏好农村非正规金融的动因:理论模型与经验证据

在广大发展中国家及欠发达地区,农户参与正规金融市场的程度很低,尤其是贫困农户的参与度更低。已有的研究认为正规金融部门实施的信贷配给导致了上述现象的发生。而本文提出一个新的命题:农户偏好从非正规金融市场借款是出于成本收益的算计,是既定约束条件下的理性选择,越贫困的农户越偏好农村非正规金融市场。此外,还运用数理模型论证了该命题在理论上成立的可能性,并通过对相关调研资料的梳理及实地调研为该命题的成立提供了充分的经验证据。     

Efficiency or equity? The effect of an exogenous agricultural commercial shock: Evidence from Manchuria in the 1930s

The adoption of high-value cash crops (HVCs) is considered an efficient way to improve farmers' productivity and welfare, although the systematic empirical evidence is limited. By exploiting an exogenous commercial shock for soybeans and microlevel rural survey data from Manchuria of China in the 1930s, where factor markets were relatively well functioning, this study investigates the influence of HVC cultivation on farmers' agricultural performance, welfare, and inequality both theoretically and empirically. We find that (i) larger farms devote a larger proportion of land to HVCs and that (ii) farmers who cultivate a larger proportion of HVCs have higher agricultural productivity, profit, net income, and expenditure. Furthermore, the adoption of HVCs lowers profit, income, and expenditure inequality by enhancing income from wages relative to land rents, which benefits households with less land.     

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.     

Migrants,urban poverty and the changing nature of urban–rural linkages in Kenya

In the literature on rural–urban linkages in sub-Saharan Africa the focus has so far been predominantly on the urban dwellers contributing to the livelihood of the rural ones, usually through remittances from family members living in the city. Although acknowledged in the last two decades, the reverse flow, i.e. the extent to which town dwellers realise part of their livelihood from rural sources, remains poorly understood. Based on recent research in Nakuru town, Kenya, this paper demonstrates that urban–rural linkages are not only important for the rural households, but are becoming an important element of the livelihood (or survival) strategies of poor urban households.     

农机社会化服务采纳、禀赋差异与农村经济相对贫困缓解

进入以缓解相对贫困为重点的后扶贫时代，农村经济相对贫困问题仍不容忽视。农机社会化服务作为小农户与现代农业有机衔接的桥梁，对于推进乡村振兴战略和脱贫攻坚有序衔接具有重要作用。文章讨论的核心议题是农机社会化服务采纳如何缓解农村经济相对贫困，并尝试建立了“农机社会化服务采纳——禀赋差异缩小——农村经济相对贫困缓解”的理论分析框架。为此，文章首先对农机社会化服务采纳影响农村经济相对贫困的作用机制进行了理论分析，然后利用2750份河南省农户问卷调查数据，运用Logit模型，实证检验农机社会化服务采纳对农村经济相对贫困的影响，并通过替代核心自变量和变更样本的方法进行稳健性检验，运用PSM模型和IVProbit模型以及ERM模型进行内生性讨论，最后通过中介效应模型对其作用机制进行验证。结果表明，农机社会化服务采纳对农村经济相对贫困具有显著负向影响，缓解了农村经济相对贫困。考虑内生性后，结论仍具有稳健性。进一步的机制验证发现，农机社会化服务采纳通过缩小劳动力禀赋差异和技术禀赋差异，缓解农村经济相对贫困，劳动力禀赋差异缩小和技术禀赋差异缩小的中介效应占比分别为21.22%和7.36%。可见，应将完善农机社会化服务供需体系纳入农户相对贫困治理机制考虑范畴，引导农户从传统家庭化生产转向现代社会化生产，扩大农机社会化服务采纳范围；同时完善就业服务等相关配套体系以吸纳释放的弱劳动力，促进农户收入增长，缓解农村经济相对贫困。     

Rural Nonfarm Incomes in Nicaragua

This paper examines nonfarm incomes of rural Nicaraguan households using a nationwide survey (LSMS) from 1998. The key findings are as follows. (a) Rural nonfarm income (RNFI) constitutes 41% of rural household incomes. (b) RNFI is much more important than farm wage-labor income. (c) RNFI tends to be relatively concentrated geographically and socioeconomically, toward the rural areas of the Managua zone and the Rest-of-Pacific zone, which are denser in infrastructure and population, and toward the upper income quartile of rural households. This concentration implies high entry barriers and capital requirements for rural nonfarm activity that the poor are simply not equipped to overcome. Equipping the rural poor through training and acquisition of diverse forms of capital to have a chance at the higher return nonfarm jobs would be a major step toward helping them to share the benefits of the rural nonfarm economy. (d) Self-employment (small enterprise) income in manufactures is very minor, probably due to the ease of obtaining manufactured goods from urban industries and imports. Wage employment constitutes the bulk of RNFI (despite it receiving little attention in development programs and debate). (e) Three-quarters of RNFI is in the service sector, and only one-quarter is from manufactures; that can be contrasted with the emphasis on small manufactures enterprises in rural development programs and research. (f) Education, road access, as well as access to electricity and water were found to be important to nonfarm incomes.     

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 determinants of rural and urban household poverty in the North West province of South Africa

Based on standard poverty measures, the extent of poverty in the North West province is on average worse than in South Africa. For instance, the poverty gap ratio for North West is twice that of the South African average, and the FGT index is three times as high. This article therefore aims to identify the determinants of rural and urban poverty in the North West province of South Africa. Using data gathered from a survey of 593 black households across the province, probit model estimates suggest that the major significant determinants of household poverty in both rural and urban areas are education and household size. A difference between rural and urban poverty is, first, that extra female adults in a rural household raise the probability of poverty. Secondly, having a migrant (out) worker as head of the household in rural areas lowers the probability of poverty, while this does not apply to urban households. A sensitivity analysis for the robustness of the results over a range of poverty lines reveals that the impact of education is much stronger for poorer households than for more wealthy households.     

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.     

Where the Water is Free but the Buckets are Empty: Demand Analysis of Drinking Water in Rural India

This paper examines how a policy of providing free domestic water can be unsustainable. Using a conditional logit model, this research looks at the demand side and identifies the determinants of choice. Under assumptions normally associated with developing societies, the model shows that the people's perception of benefits of safe water is significant, household variables like female literacy are important variables determining the choice of safe water and the capability to pay and willingness to pay already exists. The governments in poor countries need to have a fresh look at their policy relating to rural water supply.