Working Paper #2017-009
Financing rural households and its impact: Evidence from randomized field experiment data
We evaluate the short-term impact of financial support to smallholder
farmers and training program to married women in two regions of
Ethiopia. Using household-level panel data from the World Bank collected
in 2010-2012, the combined Difference-In-Difference (DID) and matching
methods are applied. The three main findings emerge from the analysis
shows that first; the program seems to improve rural households’ annual
income from farm and non-farm economic activities (26 percent). Second,
financial incentive positively affects smallholders’ innovative farm
practices, adoption of modern technologies and new marketing approach.
Third, only training to resource-poor rural women is not enough to their
income earning activities. Farm households engage themselves in nonfarm
economic activities measured in working days positively affect
households’ income. However, the whole household member participation in
agricultural activities has a negative effect on income, suggesting that
the surplus labor participation on a small land holding household
resulting in diminishing marginal return on income.
- Keywords
-
- Rural capacity building
- innovation
- technologies
- randomized control trials
- Ethiopia
- JEL codes
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- C93
- O12
- Q14
Cite this as
APA 7th ed.Mekonnen Melesse, T. (2017). Financing rural households and its impact: Evidence from randomized field experiment data (UNU-MERIT Working Paper No. 2017-009). UNU-MERIT. https://unu-merit.nl/publications/working-papers/abstract/?id=6354