IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jageco/v73y2022i1p257-276.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Gauging the impact of Ethiopia’s productive safety net programme on agriculture: Application of targeted maximum likelihood estimation approach

Author

Listed:
  • Bezawit Adugna Bahru
  • Manfred Zeller

Abstract

The Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) is Ethiopia's poverty reduction strategy that forms the most important pillar of the country's agricultural transformation into a more productive and competitive sector. However, the extent to which the PSNP is linked to agriculture is unclear. This paper evaluates the impact of the PSNP on a range of agricultural outcomes. We use data from the Living Standard Measurement Study—Integrated Survey on Agriculture and apply the targeted maximum likelihood estimation method. We find no evidence that PSNP participation improved technology adoption, time spent in agriculture, household‐level access to agricultural services, or women's control over agricultural assets. However, PSNP participation increased access to credit, the share of non‐farm income, hours spent on casual work, community access to irrigation water, ownership of agricultural tools, community service in crop and livestock production, natural resource management, and access to credit. We also observe that PSNP households have a lower level of endowments compared to non‐PSNP households. Given the observed lack of impact on household‐level agricultural outcomes, we recommend integrating household‐level interventions, such as increasing the transfer size and provision of productive assets, that could lift household endowments above an asset threshold that would allow the productive use of community assets. This may boost the productive impact of the PSNP at the household level, facilitate agricultural development and economic growth. To generate additional insights, we recommend further research with sufficient data on the causal pathways between safety nets and agriculture.

Suggested Citation

  • Bezawit Adugna Bahru & Manfred Zeller, 2022. "Gauging the impact of Ethiopia’s productive safety net programme on agriculture: Application of targeted maximum likelihood estimation approach," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 73(1), pages 257-276, February.
  • Handle: RePEc:bla:jageco:v:73:y:2022:i:1:p:257-276
    DOI: 10.1111/1477-9552.12452
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/1477-9552.12452
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/1477-9552.12452?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Abera Demeke & Alwin Keil & Manfred Zeller, 2011. "Using panel data to estimate the effect of rainfall shocks on smallholders food security and vulnerability in rural Ethiopia," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 108(1), pages 185-206, September.
    2. Holden, Stein & Barrett, Christopher B. & Hagos, Fitsum, 2006. "Food-for-work for poverty reduction and the promotion of sustainable land use: can it work?," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 11(1), pages 15-38, February.
    3. Barrientos, Armando, 2012. "Social Transfers and Growth: What Do We Know? What Do We Need to Find Out?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 11-20.
    4. John Hoddinott & Guush Berhane & Daniel O. Gilligan & Neha Kumar & Alemayehu Seyoum Taffesse, 2012. "The Impact of Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net Programme and Related Transfers on Agricultural Productivity," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 21(5), pages -786, November.
    5. Sibhatu, Kibrom T. & Qaim, Matin, 2018. "Review: Meta-analysis of the association between production diversity, diets, and nutrition in smallholder farm households," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 1-18.
    6. Bethelhem Debela & Gerald Shively & Stein Holden, 2015. "Does Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Program improve child nutrition?," Food Security: The Science, Sociology and Economics of Food Production and Access to Food, Springer;The International Society for Plant Pathology, vol. 7(6), pages 1273-1289, December.
    7. Porter, Catherine & Goyal, Radhika, 2016. "Social protection for all ages? Impacts of Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Program on child nutrition," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 92-99.
    8. van der Laan Mark J. & Rubin Daniel, 2006. "Targeted Maximum Likelihood Learning," The International Journal of Biostatistics, De Gruyter, vol. 2(1), pages 1-40, December.
    9. Yonas Alem & Nzinga H. Broussard, 2018. "The impact of safety nets on technology adoption: a difference†in†differences analysis," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 49(1), pages 13-24, January.
    10. Guush Berhane & Daniel O. Gilligan & John Hoddinott & Neha Kumar & Alemayehu Seyoum Taffesse, 2014. "Can Social Protection Work in Africa? The Impact of Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net Programme," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 63(1), pages 1-26.
    11. Bethelhem Legesse Debela & Gerald E. Shively & Stein T. Holden, 2021. "Implications of food-for-work programs for consumption and production diversity: Evidence from the Tigray Region of Ethiopia," Agricultural and Food Economics, Springer;Italian Society of Agricultural Economics (SIDEA), vol. 9(1), pages 1-24, December.
    12. Jones, Andrew D. & Shrinivas, Aditya & Bezner-Kerr, Rachel, 2014. "Farm production diversity is associated with greater household dietary diversity in Malawi: Findings from nationally representative data," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 1-12.
    13. Gruber Susan & van der Laan Mark J., 2010. "A Targeted Maximum Likelihood Estimator of a Causal Effect on a Bounded Continuous Outcome," The International Journal of Biostatistics, De Gruyter, vol. 6(1), pages 1-18, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Scognamillo, Antonio & Mastrorillo, Marina & Ignaciuk, Adriana, 2024. "One for all and all for one: Increasing the adaptive capacity of households and communities through a public work programme," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 175(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jules Gazeaud & Victor Stephane, 2023. "Productive Workfare? Evidence from Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net Program," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 105(1), pages 265-290, January.
    2. Girmay Berhe Araya, 2020. "Impact of Ethiopia's productive safety net program on manure use by rural households: Evidence from Tigrai, Northern Ethiopia," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 51(5), pages 725-742, September.
    3. Araya, Girma Behe & Holden , Stein T., 2017. "Is Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Program Enhancing Dependency?," CLTS Working Papers 5/17, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Centre for Land Tenure Studies, revised 21 Oct 2019.
    4. Getachew Yirga Belete, 2021. "Impacts of Social Protection Programmes on Children’s Resources and Wellbeing: Evidence from Ethiopia," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 14(2), pages 681-712, April.
    5. Stoeffler, Quentin & Mills, Bradford, 2014. "Households’ investments in durable and productive assets in Niger: quasi-experimental evidences from a cash transfer project," 2014 Annual Meeting, July 27-29, 2014, Minneapolis, Minnesota 170212, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    6. Tagel Gebrehiwot & Carolina Castilla, 2018. "Do safety net transfers improve household diets and reduce undernutrition? Evidence from rural Ethiopia," Working Papers PMMA 2018-03, PEP-PMMA.
    7. Maryia Bakhtsiyarava & Kathryn Grace, 2021. "Agricultural production diversity and child nutrition in Ethiopia," Food Security: The Science, Sociology and Economics of Food Production and Access to Food, Springer;The International Society for Plant Pathology, vol. 13(6), pages 1407-1422, December.
    8. Gehrke, Esther & Hartwig, Renate, 2018. "Productive effects of public works programs: What do we know? What should we know?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 111-124.
    9. Bahru, B., 2018. "Climatic shocks and child undernutrition in Ethiopia: A longitudinal path analysis," 2018 Conference, July 28-August 2, 2018, Vancouver, British Columbia 277297, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    10. Borga, Liyousew G. & D’Ambrosio, Conchita, 2021. "Social protection and multidimensional poverty: Lessons from Ethiopia, India and Peru," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    11. Aregawi G. Gebremariam & Elisabetta Lodigiani & Giacomo Pasini, 2017. "The impact of Ethiopian Productive Safety-net Program on children's educational aspirations," Working Papers 2017:26, Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari".
    12. Tesfaye, Wondimagegn & Tirivayi, Nyasha, 2020. "Crop diversity, household welfare and consumption smoothing under risk: Evidence from rural Uganda," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    13. Aregawi G Gebremariam & Elisabetta Lodigiani & Giacomo Pasini, 2024. "The Impact of Ethiopian Productive Safety Net Program on Children's Educational Aspirations and Attainments," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 33(3), pages 271-296.
    14. Sukhwinder Singh & Andrew D. Jones & Ruth S. DeFries & Meha Jain, 2020. "The association between crop and income diversity and farmer intra-household dietary diversity in India," Food Security: The Science, Sociology and Economics of Food Production and Access to Food, Springer;The International Society for Plant Pathology, vol. 12(2), pages 369-390, April.
    15. Waverly Wei & Maya Petersen & Mark J van der Laan & Zeyu Zheng & Chong Wu & Jingshen Wang, 2023. "Efficient targeted learning of heterogeneous treatment effects for multiple subgroups," Biometrics, The International Biometric Society, vol. 79(3), pages 1934-1946, September.
    16. Del Prete, Davide & Ghins, Léopold & Magrini, Emiliano & Pauw, Karl, 2019. "Land consolidation, specialization and household diets: Evidence from Rwanda," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 139-149.
    17. Hirvonen, Kalle & Bossuyt, Anne & Pigois, Remy, 2017. "Complementarities between social protection and health sector policies: Evidence from the Productive Safety Net Program in Ethiopia," ESSP working papers 112, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    18. Simons, Andrew M., 2022. "What is the optimal locus of control for social assistance programs? Evidence from the Productive Safety Net Program in Ethiopia," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    19. Timler, Carl & Alvarez, Stéphanie & DeClerck, Fabrice & Remans, Roseline & Raneri, Jessica & Estrada Carmona, Natalia & Mashingaidze, Nester & Abe Chatterjee, Shantonu & Chiang, Tsai Wei & Termote, Ce, 2020. "Exploring solution spaces for nutrition-sensitive agriculture in Kenya and Vietnam," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 180(C).
    20. Chrisendo, Daniel & Krishna, Vijesh V. & Siregar, Hermanto & Qaim, Matin, 2020. "Land-use change, nutrition, and gender roles in Indonesian farm households," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jageco:v:73:y:2022:i:1:p:257-276. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0021-857X .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.