IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/erevae/v51y2024i4p1045-1068..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Drought shocks and labour reallocation in rural Africa: evidence from Ethiopia

Author

Listed:
  • Arnold L Musungu
  • Zaneta Kubik
  • Matin Qaim

Abstract

We study how rural households in Ethiopia adapt to droughts through labour reallocation. Using three waves of panel data and exploiting spatio-temporal variations in drought exposure, we find that households reduce on-farm work and increase off-farm self-employment in response to both short-term and persistent droughts, without abandoning family farming. Diversification into off-farm activities is driven by drought-related productivity declines in agriculture and contributes to consumption smoothing and food security. Households with better access to financial services are more likely to reallocate labour off-farm. Our results highlight the importance of strengthening the rural non-farm economy to enhance rural households’ climate resilience.

Suggested Citation

  • Arnold L Musungu & Zaneta Kubik & Matin Qaim, 2024. "Drought shocks and labour reallocation in rural Africa: evidence from Ethiopia," European Review of Agricultural Economics, Oxford University Press and the European Agricultural and Applied Economics Publications Foundation, vol. 51(4), pages 1045-1068.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:erevae:v:51:y:2024:i:4:p:1045-1068.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/erae/jbae020
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    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:oup:erevae:v:51:y:2024:i:4:p:1045-1068.. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/eaaeeea.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.