Large-scale agro-industrial investments and rural poverty: evidence from sugarcane in Malawi
Large-scale agro-industrial investments and rural poverty: evidence from sugarcane in Malawi
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大规模农工投资与农村贫困：来自马拉维甘蔗的证据
DOI：
10.1093/jae/ejv015
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发表时间：
2015
影响因子：
1.6
通讯作者：
U. Grote
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
R. Herrmann;U. Grote
本文调查了撒哈拉以南非洲大规模农产工业投资对家庭福利的潜在影响。具体地说，它比较了纳入马拉维糖业投资的家庭和未纳入其中的家庭的收入和贫困情况。研究了两种不同的供应链结构：小农外植者系统和垂直整合的产业生产系统。使用倾向分数匹配和一些稳健性检查来解决潜在的选择偏差。我们发现，无论是在供应链设置中还是在各自的反事实中，参与者之间都存在着显著的正向收入差异。总体而言，相对于反事实，外生者的收入贫困显著较低，而在房地产工人的情况下，这些差异只对极端贫困线有显著意义。定性访谈证实了这些结果，但它们也暗示了农村穷人面临的风险，这些风险与扩大新的外植者计划的社会冲突有关，以及现有计划的运作缺乏透明度，这可能会破坏这种投资的减贫潜力。
This article investigates the potential household welfare implications of large-scale agro-industry investments in Sub-Saharan Africa. Specifically, it compares the income and poverty of households integrated into a Malawian sugar investment with those households not integrated. Two different supply-chain set-ups are studied: smallholder outgrower and vertically integrated estate-production systems. Potential selection bias is addressed using propensity score matching and a number of robustness checks. We find significant positive income differences between participants in either supply-chain set-up and the respective counterfactual. Overall, income poverty is significantly lower among outgrowers relative to the counterfactual, whereas in the case of estate workers these differences are only significant for the extreme poverty line. Qualitative interviews confirm these results, but they also allude to risks for the rural poor associated with social conflicts in the expansion of new outgrower schemes as well as a lack of transparency in the operation of existing schemes, which are likely to undermine the poverty-reducing potentials of such investments.