IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/wdevel/v39y2011i12p2165-2175.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Effect of Irrigation on Poverty Reduction, Asset Accumulation, and Informal Insurance: Evidence from Northern Mali

Author

Listed:
  • Dillon, Andrew

Abstract

The impact of small-scale irrigation investments on household consumption, assets, and informal insurance is estimated from a panel of Northern Malian households (1998–2006). Access to irrigation increases household consumption by 27–30% relative to water-recession and rain-fed cultivators. The paper also investigates whether irrigation has secondary impacts on risk-mitigating strategies by reducing covariate risk and reinforcing informal food sharing networks that allow households to insure against idiosyncratic risk. We find that households with irrigation save between 4.5 and 6.4 more tropical livestock units and are 20% more likely to engage in informal food sharing with non-irrigators. This finding suggests that impact estimates that rely on consumption, may underestimate welfare gains by ignoring the household’s savings behavior and informal insurance network.

Suggested Citation

  • Dillon, Andrew, 2011. "The Effect of Irrigation on Poverty Reduction, Asset Accumulation, and Informal Insurance: Evidence from Northern Mali," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 39(12), pages 2165-2175.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:39:y:2011:i:12:p:2165-2175
    DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2011.04.006
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X11000763
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.worlddev.2011.04.006?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. repec:bla:obuest:v:63:y:2001:i:1:p:115-43 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. A. Smith, Jeffrey & E. Todd, Petra, 2005. "Does matching overcome LaLonde's critique of nonexperimental estimators?," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 125(1-2), pages 305-353.
    3. James J. Heckman & Hidehiko Ichimura & Petra E. Todd, 1997. "Matching As An Econometric Evaluation Estimator: Evidence from Evaluating a Job Training Programme," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 64(4), pages 605-654.
    4. Ethan Ligon & Jonathan P. Thomas & Tim Worrall, 2002. "Informal Insurance Arrangements with Limited Commitment: Theory and Evidence from Village Economies," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 69(1), pages 209-244.
    5. Ravallion, Martin & Chen, Shaohua, 2005. "Hidden impact? Household saving in response to a poor-area development project," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(11-12), pages 2183-2204, December.
    6. Daniel O. Gilligan & John Hoddinott, 2007. "Is There Persistence in the Impact of Emergency Food Aid? Evidence on Consumption, Food Security, and Assets in Rural Ethiopia," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 89(2), pages 225-242.
    7. Townsend, Robert M, 1994. "Risk and Insurance in Village India," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 62(3), pages 539-591, May.
    8. Christopher Udry, 1994. "Risk and Insurance in a Rural Credit Market: An Empirical Investigation in Northern Nigeria," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 61(3), pages 495-526.
    9. Rajeev H. Dehejia & Sadek Wahba, 2002. "Propensity Score-Matching Methods For Nonexperimental Causal Studies," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 84(1), pages 151-161, February.
    10. Jalan, Jyotsna & Ravallion, Martin, 2003. "Estimating the Benefit Incidence of an Antipoverty Program by Propensity-Score Matching," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 21(1), pages 19-30, January.
    11. DiPrete, Thomas A. & Gangl, Markus, 2004. "Assessing bias in the estimation of causal effects: Rosenbaum bounds on matching estimators and instrumental variables estimation with imperfect instruments," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Labor Market Policy and Employment SP I 2004-101, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    12. Dehejia, Rajeev, 2005. "Practical propensity score matching: a reply to Smith and Todd," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 125(1-2), pages 355-364.
    13. Marianne Bertrand & Esther Duflo & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2004. "How Much Should We Trust Differences-In-Differences Estimates?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(1), pages 249-275.
    14. Stefan Dercon & Pramila Krishnan, 2003. "Risk Sharing and Public Transfers," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 113(486), pages 86-94, March.
    15. Angus Deaton & Salman Zaidi, 2002. "Guidelines for Constructing Consumption Aggregates for Welfare Analysis," World Bank Publications, The World Bank, number 14101, April.
    16. Arild Aakvik, 2001. "Bounding a Matching Estimator: The Case of a Norwegian Training Program," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 63(1), pages 115-143, February.
    17. Daniel O. Gilligan & John Hoddinott, 2007. "Is There Persistence in the Impact of Emergency Food Aid? Evidence on Consumption, Food Security, and Assets in Rural Ethiopia," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 89(2), pages 225-242.
    18. You, Liangzhi & Ringler, Claudia & Nelson, Gerald & Wood-Sichra, Ulrike & Robertson, Richard & Wood, Stanley & Guo, Zhe & Zhu, Tingju & Sun, Yan, 2010. "What is the irrigation potential for Africa?," IFPRI discussion papers 993, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    19. James Heckman & Hidehiko Ichimura & Jeffrey Smith & Petra Todd, 1998. "Characterizing Selection Bias Using Experimental Data," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 66(5), pages 1017-1098, September.
    20. Alderman, Harold & Behrman, Jere R. & Kohler, Hans-Peter & Maluccio, John A. & Cotts Watkins, Susan, 2000. "Attrition in longitudinal household survey data - some tests for three developing-country samples," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2447, The World Bank.
    21. Juan Jose Diaz & Sudhanshu Handa, 2006. "An Assessment of Propensity Score Matching as a Nonexperimental Impact Estimator: Evidence from Mexico’s PROGRESA Program," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 41(2).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Andrew Dillon, 2011. "Do Differences in the Scale of Irrigation Projects Generate Different Impacts on Poverty and Production?," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 62(2), pages 474-492, June.
    2. Dillon, Andrew, 2008. "Access to irrigation and the escape from poverty: Evidence from Northern Mali," IFPRI discussion papers 782, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    3. Ravallion, Martin, 2008. "Evaluating Anti-Poverty Programs," Handbook of Development Economics, in: T. Paul Schultz & John A. Strauss (ed.), Handbook of Development Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 59, pages 3787-3846, Elsevier.
    4. Sudhanshu Handa & John A. Maluccio, 2010. "Matching the Gold Standard: Comparing Experimental and Nonexperimental Evaluation Techniques for a Geographically Targeted Program," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 58(3), pages 415-447, April.
    5. Akudugu, Mamudu Abunga & Nyamadi, Ben Vas & Dittoh, Saa, 2016. "Transforming smallholder agriculture in Africa through irrigation: an assessment of irrigation impact pathways in Ghana," 2016 Fifth International Conference, September 23-26, 2016, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia 249285, African Association of Agricultural Economists (AAAE).
    6. Marco Caliendo & Sabine Kopeinig, 2008. "Some Practical Guidance For The Implementation Of Propensity Score Matching," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(1), pages 31-72, February.
    7. Mulugeta S. Kahsai & Randall Jackson, 2015. "Quasi-Experimental Methods an Annotated Bibliography," Working Papers Resource Document 2015-01, Regional Research Institute, West Virginia University.
    8. Mamudu Abunga Akudugu & Katherine Kaunza-Nu-Dem Millar & Margaret Atosina Akuriba, 2021. "The Livelihoods Impacts of Irrigation in Western Africa: The Ghana Experience," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(10), pages 1-13, May.
    9. Kadiyala, Suneetha & Quisumbing, Agnes & Rogers, Beatrice & Webb, Patrick, 2009. "The Impact of Prime Age Adult Mortality on Child Survival and Growth in Rural Ethiopia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 37(6), pages 1116-1128, June.
    10. Iacus, Stefano M. & Porro, Giuseppe, 2007. "Missing data imputation, matching and other applications of random recursive partitioning," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 52(2), pages 773-789, October.
    11. Gao, Qin & Zhai, Fuhua & Garfinkel, Irwin, 2010. "How Does Public Assistance Affect Family Expenditures? The Case of Urban China," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 38(7), pages 989-1000, July.
    12. Duflo, Esther & Glennerster, Rachel & Kremer, Michael, 2008. "Using Randomization in Development Economics Research: A Toolkit," Handbook of Development Economics, in: T. Paul Schultz & John A. Strauss (ed.), Handbook of Development Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 61, pages 3895-3962, Elsevier.
    13. Guido W. Imbens & Jeffrey M. Wooldridge, 2009. "Recent Developments in the Econometrics of Program Evaluation," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(1), pages 5-86, March.
    14. Ferraro, Paul J. & Miranda, Juan José, 2014. "The performance of non-experimental designs in the evaluation of environmental programs: A design-replication study using a large-scale randomized experiment as a benchmark," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 107(PA), pages 344-365.
    15. Giuseppe PORRO & Stefano Maria IACUS, 2004. "Average treatment effect estimation via random recursive partitioning," Departmental Working Papers 2004-28, Department of Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods at Università degli Studi di Milano.
    16. Steven Lehrer & Gregory Kordas, 2013. "Matching using semiparametric propensity scores," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 44(1), pages 13-45, February.
    17. Yi, Yuanyuan & Xu, Jintao & Köhlin, Gunnar & Deininger, Klaus, 2020. "Devolution and Collective Action in Forest Management: The Case of China," EfD Discussion Paper 20-21, Environment for Development, University of Gothenburg.
    18. Michael Weber, 2016. "The short-run and long-run effects of decentralizing public employment services," ifo Working Paper Series 209, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich.
    19. Hegde, Ravi & Bull, Gary Q., 2011. "Performance of an agro-forestry based Payments-for-Environmental-Services project in Mozambique: A household level analysis," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 122-130.
    20. Carlos A. Flores & Oscar A. Mitnik, 2009. "Evaluating Nonexperimental Estimators for Multiple Treatments: Evidence from Experimental Data," Working Papers 2010-10, University of Miami, Department of Economics.

    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:eee:wdevel:v:39:y:2011:i:12:p:2165-2175. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/worlddev .

    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.