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Impact Of Agricultural Market Reforms On Smallholder Farmers In ...

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identifies the variables that are most closely associated with poverty. This may help policymakers<br />

focus efforts on addressing the root causes of poverty. <strong>In</strong> addition, this analysis can provide a<br />

method of targeting assistance on the poor, based on easily observable characteristics of the<br />

households. <strong>In</strong> some countries, government assistance is provided to households identified as poor<br />

based on variables known to be related to poverty, such as education, ownership of certain assets,<br />

and housing characteristics.<br />

Table 4.1.149 shows the results of the regression analysis. The value of R 2 is 0.39, indicating that<br />

the regression equation “explains” 39 percent of the variation in per capita expenditure. This value<br />

is not unusually low for this type of analysis, but it does remind us that there is a lot of variation in<br />

per capita expenditure that cannot be capture by the variables included here.<br />

The regression analysis includes 39 independent variables, of which 15 are statistically significant<br />

at the 5 percent level 18 . The results can be summarized as follows:<br />

<br />

Larger households are poorer households, other things being equal. Each additional household<br />

member is associated with a 4 percent reduction in per capita consumption expenditure 19 . This<br />

is a common pattern in household expenditure data and is thought to reflect the difficulties in<br />

supporting a large household.<br />

<br />

A household with a large proportion of children under the age of 15 is more likely to be poor.<br />

This is expected, since children do not contribute as much to household income as an adult<br />

does.<br />

<br />

The education of the head of household is positively associated with the per capita expenditure<br />

of the household. Each additional year is associated with a 3 percent increase in per capita<br />

expenditure. This implies that even among farm households, education contributes to the<br />

productivity and/or the employment opportunities. The effect of the education of the spouse is<br />

positive but statistically insignificant.<br />

describe the relationship between that variable and the dependent variable, holding all other variables<br />

constant.<br />

18<br />

Statistical significance at the 5 percent level implies that there is only a 5 percent probability that the<br />

relationship found in the data could occur by chance.<br />

19<br />

If the coefficient is B, then a one unit increase in the independent variable increases per capita<br />

expenditure by a factor of exp(B).<br />

92

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