We analyze the effect of electrification on changes in employment structure in Cambodia, which is still in early stage of electrification and structural change. In our analysis, we aim to examine the movement out of agriculture by looking into different categories of nonagricultural employment: nonagricultural self-employment, nonagricultural wage employment and nonagricultural unpaid workers. In order to mitigate the problem of non-random placement of electricity, we use the inverse probability of treatment weighting regression adjustment (IPWRA) method to conduct two different estimations, one with individual-level repeated cross-section data and another with district-level panel data, taking advantage of large and representative sample from the Cambodia General Population Census in 1998 and 2008. We found that the movement out of agriculture is dominated by non-farm self-employment activities. Access to electricity increases nonagricultural self-employment of both men and women by 10-12 percentage points. We also confirm a lack of external effects of electrification in rural Cambodia possibly due to low electrification rates among rural households.
We use primary data to examine the potential role of wild foods in alleviating food insecurity among rural farmers in Bhutan during the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that food-insecure households are more likely to collect wild foods, suggesting that food-insecure households are consuming wild foods as a coping mechanism. Therefore, it is crucial to include wild food considerations in regional, national, and international food security policy to promote resilience and reduce vulnerability in rural communities. Food security policies may enable the use and consumption of wild foods as a complementary source of food and nutrition, especially in remote areas. Further, the government should implement policies on managing wild foods as it is a public good, and its conservation is crucial for preserving biodiversity.
JEL Codes: Q18, Q20
Rural households in developing countries have limited capacity to cope with and manage shocks, thereby resulting in chronic poverty, indebtedness, and a decline in overall well-being. Therefore, this study analyzes the effects of health shocks on overindebtedness in rural Viet Nam and examines the role of the national health insurance program in mitigating the negative effects of health shocks using four rounds of a balanced panel data set of about 1,750 households observed over a decade (2007, 2010, 2013, 2016). Employing the household- level fixed-effect model, this study finds that health shocks reduce household earned income and food expenditure and increase health expenditure among rural Vietnamese households. It also finds that households cope with health shocks mainly by borrowing from more sources. Households experiencing health shocks are 2.2 to 3.1 percentage points more likely to be overindebted. This study also finds that these negative effects of health shocks are statistically significant only among uninsured households, suggesting that social health insurance can reduce households’ vulnerability to the consequences of health shocks. These findings strongly support efforts to expand access to social health insurance in rural Viet Nam.
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