The data comes from the household survey in Nyabihu District (Rwanda) in 2012. This data is used for doctoral research on "The Determinants of Long-Term Growth in Smallholder Farmers in Rwanda: An Intergenerational Analysis". The surveyed households were initially surveyed in 1986 by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) under the study on "Commercialization of Agriculture under Population Pressure" (See von Braun et al., 1991: http://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/rr85.pdf)

The data on 400 semi-subsistence household surveys conducted in the Khorezm province and southern districts of the Autonomous Republic of Karakalpakstan, Uzbekistan.

The current study explores the determinants of long-term growth in small-scale agriculture in a rural area of Rwanda, with a special focus on intergenerational mobility of income and poverty over the past two and a half decades. We use a unique panel dataset that spans over a 26 year-period, constructed from two waves of household surveys conducted in Nyabihu, the most densely populated rural district in Rwanda. The first wave of data was collected by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) from 190 respondents in 1986. While in the second survey done in 2012, we followed the same households and the households of family members who split off from them in order to construct a dataset of extended families that consists of 164 original households and 200 split-off households. The analysis of the demographic structure shows that the sample population has increased by 88 percent over the past two and a half decades. Econometric results indicate that human fertility is positively associated with initial household income, and household head’s age, but inversely correlated with mother’s age at marriage and mother’s education. In this context, we found evidence of Boserup effect in the study area. Accordingly, there is a positive and statistically significant correlation between household size and agricultural intensification as well as farm productivity. However, the obtained inverse association between the family size and per capita expenditure speaks for immediate policy to reduce the growth of population in the study area. The findings from Cobb-Douglass function estimation suggest that factors such as labor, capital, land, and land quality are the key drivers of output growth. Agricultural production in the study area is characterized by decreasing returns to scale economies, with high output elasticities of labor (0.48), followed by lower elasticities of capital (0.17) and land (0.13). However, productivity of labor will not continue to grow at the pace of consumption demand, considering decreasing marginal returns of labor and the prevailing level of population growth. Pathways to less labor intensive agricultural and off-farm employment are highly desirable. The use of cellular phones by farmers has significantly increased output level and income in recent years. The study finds that agricultural output of mobile phone users is at least 38 percent higher than output of non-users, whereas their income level is about 26 percent higher. The provision of network infrastructure and electricity in the study area can enhance agricultural development through increased adoptions of telecommunication technology by smallholder farmers. The transmission matrices and regression results suggest strong income mobility and relatively small persistence of assets holding across generations, especially with regard to land and livestock which are considered as eminent assets in the study area. Everything else being equal, a ten percent increase in parental landholding is associated with a three percent increase in available land for the children. Similarly, an increase of ten percent in parent’s livestock is associated with a two percent increase in livestock for their offspring. Besides, the data suggest a relatively small degree of persistence of poverty across generations in the study area. Therefore, key policy options should not only aim at controlling the population growth, but also ensuring a fair distribution of wealth to ensure poverty reduction and rural development in Rwanda.

This study investigates the role of the land rental market in rural economic development with the province Chongqing, China, as case study region. The study focuses on the question participation in the land rental market can improve agricultural production efficiency and alleviate income inequality in rural areas. Finally, the factors that affect rental market participation of farm households are examined. A stochastic frontier approach was employed to measure effect of the land rental market participation on agricultural productivity. Two competing hypotheses are tested: 1) Less efficient farm households rent out land to more efficient farm households and agricultural productivity is improved; 2) More efficient farm households rent out land and work off of farm, which results in lower agricultural productivity. The results showed that both of these hypotheses are possibly true, but more efficient farm households are more likely to rent land rather than rent it out, which implies the productivity enhancive effect of land rental market. To investigate the impact of land rental market development on rural income distribution, firstly the income inequality was decomposed to measure the contribution of land rental income to total income inequality and the interactions between land rental income and other income sources. Then, relying on the inequality index calculated, a fixed effect model was used to investigate the impact of participation in the land rental market and land rental market imperfection on income inequality index. The results showed that contribution of land rental income to total income inequality is increasing over the observation period. And participation in land rental market may reduce income inequality, given an imperfect land rental market. Deriving from a farm household model, farm households’ supply and demand decisions in land rental market were explored. The multinomial Logit model is used to examine factors that influence farm household participation probability in the land rental market. Tobit models are employed to measure the impact on the quantity of renting and renting out by farm households. Results show the importance of off-farm work wage and off-farm labor market imperfection in defining the rental behavior of farm households: it prevents farm households from renting land and encourage them to rent out. Simulation results show that rising off-farm work wages and participation rate in the off-farm labor market lead to a lower equilibrium land rent in a closed economy.

The data was conducted by three Organizations: EDRI, IFPRI and University of Sussex to see the Impact of biomassweb on the economies of developing countries using the 2005 Household Income Consumption Expenditure Survey. It covers 65 production accounts, 100 consumption accounts, 16 households, 4 factors of production and, government, I-S and ROW accounts.

The data included were collected from three villages of Chongqing, China in 2011. Topics related to land rental market participation were the theme of survey.

A survey of agricultural households was conducted in early 2011 in order to provide background information on landownership, size of operation, rice production, input use, and farm practices in rural communities, as well as to identify and assess existing climate change adaptation strategies. A resurvey was conducted in late 2012 to build on the initial round of the survey, known as the Bangladesh Climate Change Adaptation Survey, with a greater focus on gender and asset dynamics. We tried to track all the households including the split with an attrition rate of 2.66 percent.e this template for data such as statistics, surveys, etc.

The energy consumption in Ethiopia is based mainly (90%) on the traditional use of biomass for domestic needs, mostly using rudimentary cooking stoves. Against this background, the present study examines the importance of biomass for energy use of rural households and analyzes the long-term energy security. To this end, a farm household model is developed to investigate the association between the use of biomass for energy and food security. The study explores the effects of fuelwood shortages on the livelihood of the people through an examination of the decisions of households on the use of family labour and expenditures on food and energy. For this purpose, the study uses a panel dataset of Ethiopian households. Due to the endogeneity of shadow wages and prices and to selectivity biases a Fixed Effect Two-Stage Least Squares model is used with an “inverse Mills ratios” for wages, and food and energy expenditures. In addition, a Seemingly Unrelated Regression Analysis and Almost Ideal Demand System are used respectively to estimate the allocation of labour to agriculture, fuelwood collection and off-farm activities jointly. Discrete household energy choice decisions are estimated using a multinomial logit model with predicted wages and other determinants. Shadow prices of fuelwood and agricultural fuels were estimated based on their respective shadow wages and per unit labour hours expended in order to procure the respective energy sources. Furthermore, an Ordinary Least Squares and Tobit model were used to estimate the household demand for fuelwood, and charcoal and agricultural fuels respectively. A dynamic long-term model for the energy sector in Ethiopia is used to investigate the development of renewable energy for a cost-effective energy diversification at the national level. Finally, the suitability of institutional arrangements and collective actions for decentralized energy generation for remote communities are evaluated. The regression results show that fuelwood shortage or a decrease in the shadow wage for fuelwood collecting labour have negative effects on the allocation of labour on the agriculture, and a decrease in energy and food per capita expenditure. At the same time higher wages in agriculture have negative effects on the allocation of labour to the collection of fuelwood. An increase in fuelwood shortage was associated with in an increase in labour expended on fuelwood collection. The allocation of labour to the collection of fuelwood has a negative self–reward effect with an increase in shortage of fuelwood. A greater scarcity of fuelwood associated with the increase in purchase of biomass energy. An increase in the opportunity cost of fuelwood is associated with a decline in the use of this fuel with an own-price elasticity of -0.38. These evidences suggest that fuelwood shortage has negative effects on the welfare of households. Agricultural fuels and kerosene are not substitutes for fuelwood, which conforms to results of previous studies. The wealth of households, access to electricity, population density have the expected effect on the use of biomass. The energy use of households conforms to the concept of 'energy stacking' or, multiple fuel utilization'. However, access to modern forms of energy and economic growth play a central role in such a transition. Concerted policies are needed to help to improve the standard of living and the entrepreneurial skills of household. Furthermore, model results indicate that hydro-electric power will dominate the energy mix of the country without intervention in technological progress and innovations to improve efficiency. In the long term, however, it is predicted that droughts affect the reliability of this source of energy and the cost of energy will push up. To cope with these effects of drought in the hydro-electric sector in Ethiopia, Ethiopia needs to invest in the development of renewable energy resources more. This would improve both sustainability and resilience, but also increase production costs. Innovations to improve the technology and the efficiency of obtaining alternative energy, especially solar energy, increase diversity of energy sources, and reduce production costs and shadow prices and resource scarcity. Such innovations are therefore keys to reduce the risk of droughts and to improve the energy security and thus serve as an engine of economic growth. The results of a cost-benefit analysis for the development of biogas suggest that subsidies for large decentralized biogas plants could achieve higher profits than small biogas plants for households. Specific policy measures should improve energy efficiency and substitution and technical performance, tangible incentives such as capital subsidies and feed-in tariffs, ensure the availability of microcredit for the development of renewable energy and include rural households in local, smart grids.

The first part of the dissertation deals with the dynamics of assets owned by the household head, his spouse, or jointly by both in response to diverse shocks in rural agricultural households in Bangladesh, one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change. Therefore, a unique and detailed country representing household survey panel data is used, known as ‘Bangladesh Climate Change Adaptation Survey’ of 2010 and 2012. Looking at changes within rather than between households, the research shows that land is owned mostly by men, who are also wealthier than their spouses. By constructing a comprehensive index the overall effect on wealth is investigated, which does not exist in the literature yet. The results suggest that husband’s and wife’s asset holdings respond differently depending on the type of shocks. Weather shocks such as cyclones adversely affect the asset holdings of household heads in general, while predicted external events such as seasonal droughts and dowry payments reduce assets of both spouses. The results suggest that jointly owned assets are not sold in response to shocks; either due to these assets being actively protected or due to the difficulty of agreeing on this coping strategy. Women’s asset holdings and associated choices of substituting assets are shaped by their lesser involvement in agriculture. To know the changes of behavioral patterns in response to these shocks, the results suggest that households are more likely to adopt short-term coping mechanisms in response to non-climatic negative shocks rather than to climatic shocks, whereas households are more likely engage in adaptation strategies in response to the latter. Furthermore, adaptation strategies are often combined complementary efforts, whereas coping mechanisms are mutually independent across the study. In particular, group participation in general is associated with crop adaptation strategies and perceptions of climate change among women. Finally, the research seeks to explore the potential of group based approaches which is receiving a growing attention due to their possible role in securing household welfare in the presence of adverse events. The inherent endogeneity is addressed by using instrumental variables. The results suggest that household heads mainly participate in groups that are welfare augmenting and income enhancing, while their spouses are mainly active in credit groups due to less personal wealth which are more strongly negatively affected by shocks. Furthermore, evidence is found for a positive association of social and political capital with household-level welfare and with asset holdings of the household head. Interestingly, it seems that this effect is not driven by mere participation in groups, but also by other aspects of social capital, for example informal networks, of both household heads and spouses.

The survey covers 227 small holder maize growing farmers in Bako, Jimma Arjo and Yayu in the Oromia region. The baseline information covers the farming household characteristics (fam size, sources of income, education levels etc), maize and livestock production challenges, access to extension and markets.