To Specialize or Diversify: Agricultural Diversity and Poverty Dynamics in Ethiopia
To Specialize or Diversify: Agricultural Diversity and Poverty Dynamics in Ethiopia
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DOI：
10.1016/j.worlddev.2016.08.011
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发表时间：
2017-01-01
影响因子：
6.9
通讯作者：
Josephson, Anna L.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Michler, Jeffrey D.;Josephson, Anna L.
最近的农业发展政策已开始将重点从促进少数几种主要作物转向鼓励作物多样性。人们认为，作物多样化是处理包括减贫在内的各种问题的有效战略。然而，缺乏经验证据来证明这些立场。我们通过提供作物种植多样性对家庭贫困影响的定量证据，为填补这一研究空白做出贡献。利用埃塞俄比亚的家庭面板数据，我们开发了一个多样性指数来衡量作物多样性对贫困状况的影响。为了控制未观察到的异质性导致的内隐和选择偏差，我们利用最近开发的参数方法估计动态二元响应模型与内源性同期回归。我们的研究结果提供的证据表明，种植多种作物的家庭比专门从事作物生产的家庭更不可能贫困。此外，作物多样性降低了非贫困家庭陷入贫困的可能性和贫困家庭继续贫困的可能性。我们的结论是，作物多样化是一个可行的方式来处理的迫切需要是穷人。(C)2016爱思唯尔有限公司版权所有。
Recent agricultural development policies have begun to shift focus from the promotion of a few staple crops toward encouraging crop diversity. The belief is that crop diversification is an effective strategy for dealing with a variety of issues, including poverty alleviation. However, there is a lack of empirical evidence to justify these positions. We contribute to filling this research gap by providing quantitative evidence on the impact of diversity in crop cultivation on household poverty. Using household panel data from Ethiopia we develop a diversity index to measure the effect of crop diversity on poverty status. To control for endogeneity and selection bias resulting from unobserved heterogeneity we utilize a recently developed parametric method for estimating dynamic binary response models with endogenous contemporaneous regressors. Our results provide evidence that households which grow a diverse set of crops are less likely to be poor than households that specialize in their crop production. Additionally, crop diversity reduces the probability that a non-poor household will fall into poverty and the probability that a poor household will remain in poverty. We conclude that crop diversification is a viable way to deal with the exigencies of being poor. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.