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Agrarian Households in Semi-Arid Tropics
Evaluating Policy Options
Approximately 165 million people, about a fifth of the world’s poor, are known to live in resource-scarce, agrarian households and are called “smallholders,” living in rain-fed, semi-arid, tropical areas (SATs). Uncertainty of livelihoods in SATs is higher than in other areas of intensive farming, with short bursts of intense rainfall, high soil erosion, and cycles of drought. This paper identifies which interventions succeed most in preserving smallholders’ household wealth: (a) livestock intervention, (b) a soil and water conservation intervention and (c) an employment guarantee scheme that allows households a fixed income during droughts. It reports that livestock management and soil and water conservation have a minimal impact on asset holdings, while the employment guarantee scheme provides substantial asset protection throughout the lifetime of these households. However, the livestock intervention is the most cost-effective intervention.
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Contents
Chapter One:
Introduction and Research Questions
Chapter Two:
The “Smallholder”: A Review
Chapter Three:
A Dynamic Model of a Bullock Economy
Chapter Four:
Treatment Effects of a Community Intervention
Chapter Five:
Conclusions
Appendix A:
Dynamic Program
Appendix B:
Field Study
This document was submitted as a dissertation in September 2006 in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the doctoral degree in public policy analysis at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. The faculty committee that supervised and approved the dissertation consisted of James R. Hosek (Chair), Ranjitha Puskur, Greg K. Ridgeway, and Neeraj Sood.
This product is part of the Pardee RAND Graduate School (PRGS) dissertation series. PRGS dissertations are produced by graduate fellows of the Pardee RAND Graduate School, the world's leading producer of Ph.D.'s in policy analysis. The dissertation has been supervised, reviewed, and approved by a PRGS faculty committee overseeing the dissertation.
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