Transfers, Diversification and Household Risk Strategies : Can productive safety nets help households manage climatic variability?
Despite increasing climatic variability and frequent weather shocks in many developing countries, there is little evidence on effective policies that help poor agricultural households manage risk. This paper presents experimental evidence on a program in rural Nicaragua aimed at improving househo...
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2022
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10986/37251 |
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okr-10986-372512022-04-02T05:10:33Z Transfers, Diversification and Household Risk Strategies : Can productive safety nets help households manage climatic variability? Macours, Karen Premand, Patrick Vakis, Renos CASH TRANSFERS INVESTMENT GRANT VOCATIONAL TRAINING PRODUCTIVE SAFETY NETS DIVERSIFICATION RISK MANAGEMENT RESILIENCE CLIMATIC SHOCKS Despite increasing climatic variability and frequent weather shocks in many developing countries, there is little evidence on effective policies that help poor agricultural households manage risk. This paper presents experimental evidence on a program in rural Nicaragua aimed at improving households’ risk-management through income diversification. The intervention targeted agricultural households exposed to weather shocks and combined a one-year conditional cash transfer with vocational training or a productive investment grant. We identify the relative impact of each complementary package based on randomized assignment and analyse how impacts vary by exposure to exogenous drought shocks. The results show that both complementary interventions provide protection against weather shocks two years after the programme ended. Households that received the productive investment grant also had higher average consumption levels. The complementary interventions facilitated income smoothing and diversification of economic activities, as such offering better protection from shocks compared to beneficiaries of the basic conditional cash transfer and control households. Relaxing capital constraints induced investments in non-agricultural businesses, while relaxing skills constraints increased wage work and migration in response to shocks. These results show that combining safety nets with productive interventions relaxing skill or capital constraints can help households become more resilient and manage climatic variability. 2022-04-01T09:13:31Z 2022-04-01T09:13:31Z 2022-03-30 Journal Article The Economic Journal http://hdl.handle.net/10986/37251 CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo World Bank Oxford University Press Publications & Research :: Journal Article Gibraltar |
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Digital Repository |
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Foreign Institution |
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Digital Repositories |
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World Bank Open Knowledge Repository |
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World Bank |
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CASH TRANSFERS INVESTMENT GRANT VOCATIONAL TRAINING PRODUCTIVE SAFETY NETS DIVERSIFICATION RISK MANAGEMENT RESILIENCE CLIMATIC SHOCKS |
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CASH TRANSFERS INVESTMENT GRANT VOCATIONAL TRAINING PRODUCTIVE SAFETY NETS DIVERSIFICATION RISK MANAGEMENT RESILIENCE CLIMATIC SHOCKS Macours, Karen Premand, Patrick Vakis, Renos Transfers, Diversification and Household Risk Strategies : Can productive safety nets help households manage climatic variability? |
| geographic_facet |
Gibraltar |
| description |
Despite increasing climatic variability and frequent weather shocks in many
developing countries, there is little evidence on effective policies that help poor
agricultural households manage risk. This paper presents experimental evidence on
a program in rural Nicaragua aimed at improving households’ risk-management
through income diversification. The intervention targeted agricultural households
exposed to weather shocks and combined a one-year conditional cash transfer with
vocational training or a productive investment grant. We identify the relative
impact of each complementary package based on randomized assignment and
analyse how impacts vary by exposure to exogenous drought shocks. The results
show that both complementary interventions provide protection against weather
shocks two years after the programme ended. Households that received the
productive investment grant also had higher average consumption levels. The
complementary interventions facilitated income smoothing and diversification of
economic activities, as such offering better protection from shocks compared to
beneficiaries of the basic conditional cash transfer and control households.
Relaxing capital constraints induced investments in non-agricultural businesses,
while relaxing skills constraints increased wage work and migration in response to
shocks. These results show that combining safety nets with productive
interventions relaxing skill or capital constraints can help households become more
resilient and manage climatic variability. |
| format |
Journal Article |
| author |
Macours, Karen Premand, Patrick Vakis, Renos |
| author_facet |
Macours, Karen Premand, Patrick Vakis, Renos |
| author_sort |
Macours, Karen |
| title |
Transfers, Diversification and Household Risk Strategies : Can productive safety nets help households manage climatic variability? |
| title_short |
Transfers, Diversification and Household Risk Strategies : Can productive safety nets help households manage climatic variability? |
| title_full |
Transfers, Diversification and Household Risk Strategies : Can productive safety nets help households manage climatic variability? |
| title_fullStr |
Transfers, Diversification and Household Risk Strategies : Can productive safety nets help households manage climatic variability? |
| title_full_unstemmed |
Transfers, Diversification and Household Risk Strategies : Can productive safety nets help households manage climatic variability? |
| title_sort |
transfers, diversification and household risk strategies : can productive safety nets help households manage climatic variability? |
| publisher |
Oxford University Press |
| publishDate |
2022 |
| url |
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/37251 |
| _version_ |
1764486809366036480 |