IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/iaae06/25774.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Weather Risk and the Off-­Farm Labor Supply of Agricultural Households in India

Author

Listed:
  • Ito, Takahiro
  • Kurosaki, Takashi

Abstract

As one of the measures to smooth income, this paper focuses on the diversification of labor allocation across activities. A key feature of this paper is that it pays particular attention to differences in the covariance between weather risk and agricultural wages and between weather risk and nonagricultural wages. We estimate a multivariate tobit model of labor allocation using household data from rural areas of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, India. The regression results show that the share of the off­farm labor supply increases with the weather risk, and the increase is much larger in the case of nonagricultural wage work than in the case of agricultural wage work. Simulation results based on the regression estimates show that the sectoral difference is substantial, implying that empirical and theoretical studies on farmers' labor supply response to risk should distinguish between the types of off-­farm work involved.

Suggested Citation

  • Ito, Takahiro & Kurosaki, Takashi, 2006. "Weather Risk and the Off-­Farm Labor Supply of Agricultural Households in India," 2006 Annual Meeting, August 12-18, 2006, Queensland, Australia 25774, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:iaae06:25774
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.25774
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/25774/files/cp060470.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.25774?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. Townsend, Robert M, 1994. "Risk and Insurance in Village India," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 62(3), pages 539-591, May.
    2. Rose, Elaina, 2001. "Ex ante and ex post labor supply response to risk in a low-income area," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(2), pages 371-388, April.
    3. Lisa A. Cameron & Christopher Worswick, 2003. "The Labor Market as a Smoothing Device: Labor Supply Responses to Crop Loss," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 7(2), pages 327-341, May.
    4. Kurosaki, Takashi & Fafchamps, Marcel, 2002. "Insurance market efficiency and crop choices in Pakistan," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 419-453, April.
    5. Anjini Kochar, 1999. "Smoothing Consumption by Smoothing Income: Hours-of-Work Responses to Idiosyncratic Agricultural Shocks in Rural India," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 81(1), pages 50-61, February.
    6. Kochar, Anjini, 1997. "An empirical investigation of rationing constraints in rural credit markets in India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(2), pages 339-371, August.
    7. Jorge Cornick & Thomas L. Cox & Brian W. Gould, 1994. "Fluid Milk Purchases: A Multivariate Tobit Analysis," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 76(1), pages 74-82.
    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. Nobuhiko FUWA & Seiro ITO & Kensuke KUBO & Takashi KUROSAKI & Yasuyuki SAWADA, 2006. "Introduction To A Study Of Intrahousehold Resource Allocation And Gender Discrimination In Rural Andhra Pradesh, India," The Developing Economies, Institute of Developing Economies, vol. 44(4), pages 375-397, December.
    2. Chuang, Yating, 2019. "Climate variability, rainfall shocks, and farmers’ income diversification in India," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 174(C), pages 55-61.
    3. Laura Jeanet Martínez Rodríguez, 2017. "Impacto de la ola invernal sobre las dinámicas de uso del tiempo de hogares rurales," Documentos CEDE 15603, Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE.
    4. Yoko Kijima & Tomoya Matsumoto & Takashi Yamano, 2006. "Nonfarm employment, agricultural shocks, and poverty dynamics: evidence from rural Uganda," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 35(s3), pages 459-467, November.
    5. Ito, Takahiro, 2009. "Caste discrimination and transaction costs in the labor market: Evidence from rural North India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(2), pages 292-300, March.
    6. Demeke, Abera Birhanu & Zeller, Manfred, 2012. "Weather Risk and Household Participation in Off-farm Activities in Rural Ethiopia," Quarterly Journal of International Agriculture, Humboldt-Universitaat zu Berlin, vol. 51(01), pages 1-20, February.
    7. Jeremy D. Foltz & Ousman Gajigo, 2012. "Working Paper 145 - Assessing the Returns to Education in the Gambia," Working Paper Series 376, African Development Bank.
    8. Jeremy D. Foltz & Ousman Gajigo, 2012. "Assessing the Returns to Education in The Gambia-super- †," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 21(4), pages 580-608, August.

    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. Fafchamps, Marcel & Lund, Susan, 2003. "Risk-sharing networks in rural Philippines," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(2), pages 261-287, August.
    2. Mueller, Valerie & Quisumbing, Agnes, 2010. "Short- and long-term effects of the 1998 Bangladesh flood on rural wages," IFPRI discussion papers 956, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    3. Dubois, Pierre, 2002. "Consommation, partage de risque et assurance informelle : développements théoriques et tests empiriques récents," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 78(1), pages 115-149, Mars.
    4. van den Berg, Marrit & Burger, Kees, 2008. "Household Consumption and Natural Disasters: The Case of Hurricane Mitch in Nicaragua," 2008 International Congress, August 26-29, 2008, Ghent, Belgium 44380, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    5. Luigi Minale, 2018. "Agricultural productivity shocks, labour reallocation and rural–urban migration in China," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 18(4), pages 795-821.
    6. Chaijaroen, Pasita, 2019. "Long-lasting income shocks and adaptations: Evidence from coral bleaching in Indonesia," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 119-136.
    7. Martina Kirchberger, 2014. "Natural Disasters and Labour Markets," Economics Series Working Papers WPS/2014-19, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    8. Kailash Chandra Pradhan & Shrabani Mukherjee, 2018. "Covariate and Idiosyncratic Shocks and Coping Strategies for Poor and Non-poor Rural Households in India," Journal of Quantitative Economics, Springer;The Indian Econometric Society (TIES), vol. 16(1), pages 101-127, March.
    9. Yoshito Takasaki & Bradford L. Barham & Oliver T. Coomes, 2010. "Smoothing Income against Crop Flood Losses in Amazonia: Rain Forest or Rivers as a Safety Net?," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 14(1), pages 48-63, February.
    10. Manuel Fern�ndez & Ana Mar�a Ib��ez & Ximena Pe�a, 2014. "Adjusting the Labour Supply to Mitigate Violent Shocks: Evidence from Rural Colombia," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(8), pages 1135-1155, August.
    11. Anita Mukherjee & Shawn Cole & Jeremy Tobacman, 2021. "Targeting weather insurance markets," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 88(3), pages 757-784, September.
    12. Andrew Dillon & Valerie Mueller & Sheu Salau, 2011. "Migratory Responses to Agricultural Risk in Northern Nigeria," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 93(4), pages 1048-1061.
    13. Yaumidin, Umi Karomah, 2020. "Farmers’ responses to unexpected weather variability in developing countries: The case of Indonesia," 2020 Conference (64th), February 12-14, 2020, Perth, Western Australia 305233, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society.
    14. Jaime Lara, 2016. "Remittances as an Insurance Mechanism in the Labor Market," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 37(3), pages 368-387, September.
    15. Peter Agamile & Ralitza Dimova & Jennifer Golan, 2021. "Crop Choice, Drought and Gender: New Insights from Smallholders’ Response to Weather Shocks in Rural Uganda," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 72(3), pages 829-856, September.
    16. Gaurav, Sarthak, 2015. "Are Rainfed Agricultural Households Insured? Evidence from Five Villages in Vidarbha, India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 719-736.
    17. Olurotimi O. Soneye, 2023. "Crop appropriation, labour supply, and demand for farm inputs: Evidence from Nigeria," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 35(6), pages 995-1012, August.
    18. Sawada, Yasuyuki & Takasaki, Yoshito, 2017. "Natural Disaster, Poverty, and Development: An Introduction," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 2-15.
    19. Hurley, Terrance M., 2010. "A review of agricultural production risk in the developing world," Working Papers 188476, HarvestChoice.
    20. Chetty, Raj & Looney, Adam, 2006. "Consumption smoothing and the welfare consequences of social insurance in developing economies," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(12), pages 2351-2356, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Labor and Human Capital;

    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:ags:iaae06:25774. 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: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iaaeeea.html .

    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.