IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/aaea13/150298.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Weather and Welfare in Ethiopia

Author

Listed:
  • Foltz, Jeremy D.
  • Gars, Jared
  • Özdoğan, Mutlu
  • Simane, Belay
  • Zaitchik, Ben

Abstract

Long term increases in rural incomes and productivity in Ethiopia are threatened by weather fluctuations. Changes in weather variability and the number of extreme weather events (specifically droughts) has the capacity to undermine development efforts if it translates into decreased food availability and incomes. This study integrates downscaled daily weather data with household surveys to study the impact of weather and temperature on rural household welfare in Ethiopia. Our panel data econometric approach is one of the first to measure the impacts of weather on household consumption directly. Generally, we find that food and non-food consumption are a function of weather in Ethiopia, and that this link is lessening over time but more pronounced for poor households. Evidence from these survey villages suggests that being in a vulnerable area may not actually result in being worse off relative to being poor in a non vulnerable area. These findings have implications for focusing climate mitigation strategies on the poor regardless of location rather than just the poorest regions.

Suggested Citation

  • Foltz, Jeremy D. & Gars, Jared & Özdoğan, Mutlu & Simane, Belay & Zaitchik, Ben, 2013. "Weather and Welfare in Ethiopia," 2013 Annual Meeting, August 4-6, 2013, Washington, D.C. 150298, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:aaea13:150298
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.150298
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/150298/files/ethiopiadraftaaea.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.150298?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Skoufias, Emmanuel & Rabassa, Mariano & Olivieri, Sergio & Brahmbhatt, Milan, 2011. "The Poverty Impacts of Climate Change," World Bank - Economic Premise, The World Bank, issue 51, pages 1-5, March.
    2. Stefan Dercon & Pramila Krishnan, 1998. "Changes in poverty in rural Ethiopia 1989-1995: measurement, robustness tests and decomposition," CSAE Working Paper Series 1998-07, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    3. repec:reg:rpubli:291 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Dercon, Stefan & Christiaensen, Luc, 2011. "Consumption risk, technology adoption and poverty traps: Evidence from Ethiopia," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(2), pages 159-173, November.
    5. Skoufias, Emmanuel & Vinha, Katja & Conroy, Hector V., 2011. "The impacts of climate variability on welfare in rural Mexico," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5555, The World Bank.
    6. You, Gene Jiing-Yun & Ringler, Claudia, 2010. "Hydro-economic modeling of climate change impacts in Ethiopia," IFPRI discussion papers 960, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    7. Stefan Dercon & John Hoddinott & Tassew Woldehanna, 2005. "Shocks and Consumption in 15 Ethiopian Villages, 1999--2004," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 14(4), pages 559-585, December.
    8. Dercon, Stefan, 2004. "Growth and shocks: evidence from rural Ethiopia," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(2), pages 309-329, August.
    9. Dorte Verner, 2010. "Reducing Poverty, Protecting Livelihoods, and Building Assets in a Changing Climate : Social Implications of Climate Change for Latin America and the Caribbean," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 2473, December.
    10. Melissa Dell & Benjamin F. Jones & Benjamin A. Olken, 2009. "Temperature and Income: Reconciling New Cross-Sectional and Panel Estimates," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(2), pages 198-204, May.
    11. Olivier Deschênes & Michael Greenstone, 2007. "The Economic Impacts of Climate Change: Evidence from Agricultural Output and Random Fluctuations in Weather," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(1), pages 354-385, March.
    12. -, 2009. "The economics of climate change," Sede Subregional de la CEPAL para el Caribe (Estudios e Investigaciones) 38679, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Karim, Azreen & Noy, Ilan, 2014. "Poverty and natural disasters: A meta-analysis," Working Paper Series 3234, Victoria University of Wellington, School of Economics and Finance.
    2. Azreen Karim & Ilan Noy, 2016. "Poverty And Natural Disasters — A Qualitative Survey Of The Empirical Literature," The Singapore Economic Review (SER), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 61(01), pages 1-36, March.
    3. Noy, Ilan & Karim, Azreen, 2013. "Poverty, inequality and natural disasters – A survey," Working Paper Series 2974, Victoria University of Wellington, School of Economics and Finance.
    4. Karim, Azreen, 2018. "The Household Response to Persistent Natural Disasters: Evidence from Bangladesh," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 40-59.
    5. De Silva, M.M.G.T. & Kawasaki, Akiyuki, 2018. "Socioeconomic Vulnerability to Disaster Risk: A Case Study of Flood and Drought Impact in a Rural Sri Lankan Community," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 152(C), pages 131-140.
    6. Karim, Azreen, 2016. "The household response to persistent natural disasters: Evidence from Bangladesh," Working Paper Series 4968, Victoria University of Wellington, School of Economics and Finance.
    7. Azreen Karim & Ilan Noy, 2016. "Poverty and Natural Disasters: A Meta-Regression Analysis," Review of Economics and Institutions, Università di Perugia, vol. 7(2).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Letta, Marco & Montalbano, Pierluigi & Tol, Richard S.J., 2018. "Temperature shocks, short-term growth and poverty thresholds: Evidence from rural Tanzania," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 13-32.
    2. Mekonnen, Daniel Ayalew & Gerber, Nicolas, 2016. "Aspirations and income, food security and subjective well-being in rural Ethiopia," Discussion Papers 234562, University of Bonn, Center for Development Research (ZEF).
    3. Marco Letta & Pierluigi Montalbano & Richard S.J. Tol, 2017. "Temperature shocks, growth and poverty thresholds: evidence from rural Tanzania," Working Papers 13/17, Sapienza University of Rome, DISS.
    4. Asfaw, Solomon & Mortari, Andrea Piano & Arslan, Aslihan & Karfakis, Panagiotis & Lipper, Leslie, 2015. "Welfare Impacts of Climate Shocks: Evidence from Uganda," 2015 Conference, August 9-14, 2015, Milan, Italy 230217, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    5. Alejandro Lopez-Feldman, 2013. "Climate change, agriculture, and poverty: A household level analysis for rural Mexico," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 33(2), pages 1126-1139.
    6. Alem, Yonas, 2014. "Poverty Persistence and Intra-Household Heterogeneity in Occupations: Some Evidence from Ethiopia," RFF Working Paper Series dp-14-05-efd, Resources for the Future.
    7. Alem, Yonas, 2013. "Poverty Persistence and Intra-Household Heterogeneity in Occupations: Evidence from Urban Ethiopia," Working Papers in Economics 580, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    8. Hallegatte, Stephane & Bangalore, Mook & Bonzanigo, Laura & Fay, Marianne & Narloch, Ulf & Rozenberg, Julie & Vogt-Schilb, Adrien, 2014. "Climate change and poverty -- an analytical framework," Policy Research Working Paper Series 7126, The World Bank.
    9. Naser Amanzadeh & Toshi H. Arimura & Mohammad Vesal & Seyed Farshad Fatemi Ardestani, 2021. "The Distributional Effects of Climate Change:Evidence from Iran," RIEEM Discussion Paper Series 2007, Research Institute for Environmental Economics and Management, Waseda University.
    10. Kacem, Rami Ben Haj, 2013. "Monetary versus non-monetary pro-poor growth: Evidence from rural Ethiopia between 2004 and 2009," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 7, pages 1-22.
    11. Christian Rogg, 2006. "Asset Portfolios in Africa: Evidence from Rural Ethiopia," WIDER Working Paper Series RP2006-145, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    12. repec:ipg:wpaper:17 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Gao, Jianfeng & Mills, Bradford F., 2018. "Weather Shocks, Coping Strategies, and Consumption Dynamics in Rural Ethiopia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 268-283.
    14. Richard S J Tol, 2018. "The Economic Impacts of Climate Change," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 12(1), pages 4-25.
    15. Luca Marchiori & Jean-François Maystadt & Ingmar Schumacher, 2017. "Is Environmentally-induced Income Variability a Driver of Human Migration?," Working Papers 2017-010, Department of Research, Ipag Business School.
    16. repec:ipg:wpaper:2013-017 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Azomahou T.T. & Yitbarek E., 2015. "Poverty persistence and informal risk management: Micro evidence from urban Ethiopia," MERIT Working Papers 2015-006, United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT).
    18. Luca Marchiori & Jean Francois Maystadt & Ingmar Schumacher, 2013. "Is environmentally," Working Papers 2013-17, Department of Research, Ipag Business School.
    19. MAMOUDOU Ba & Mazhar Mughal, 2022. "Weather Shocks, Coping Strategies and Household Well-being: Evidence from Rural Mauritania," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 58(3), pages 482-502, March.
    20. Bryan, Elizabeth & Behrman, Julia A., 2013. "Community–based adaptation to climate change: A theoretical framework, overview of key issues and discussion of gender differentiated priorities and participation," CAPRi working papers 109, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    21. Lazzaroni, Sara, 2013. "Weather variability and food consumption: Evidence from rural Uganda," 2013 Second Congress, June 6-7, 2013, Parma, Italy 149774, Italian Association of Agricultural and Applied Economics (AIEAA).
    22. Marchiori, Luca & Maystadt, Jean-François & Schumacher, Ingmar, 2012. "The impact of weather anomalies on migration in sub-Saharan Africa," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 63(3), pages 355-374.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Consumer/Household Economics; International Development;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:aaea13:150298. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aaeaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.