IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/iaae18/276980.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Poverty Reduction Effects of Technology Adoption: Evidence from Nigeria

Author

Listed:
  • Alene, A.D.
  • Wossen, T.
  • Abdoulaye, T.

Abstract

This paper uses a DNA-fingerprinting based varietal identification approach to estimate adoption rates of improved cassava varieties in Nigeria. By applying a procedure that combines marginal treatment effects with a market-level model, the paper measures the counterfactual household income distributions for adopters. The paper then estimates poverty impacts of adoption of improved cassava varieties based on the differences between observed and counterfactual income distributions. Our results suggest that adoption of improved cassava varieties has led to a 4.7 percentage points poverty reduction at a poverty line of $1.25 per person per day (or 2.7% points poverty reduction if poverty line of $1.9 per person per day poverty line was considered). The analysis further suggests that farmers who are more likely to adopt improved varieties are also likely to face higher structural costs. Relaxing structural barriers that make improved technologies inaccessible and less profitable for poor households would therefore be important to maximize the poverty reduction roles of improved technologies such as cassava varieties. Further, we find that the poverty effects of adoption are very sensitive to the measurement of adoption status. Therefore, proper measurement of adoption status is crucial for estimating the poverty reduction effects of adoption accurately. Acknowledgement : This research was co-supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) under the grant the Cassava Monitoring Survey in Nigeria , the Roots, Tubers and Bananas (RTB) Research Program of the CGIAR and the ISPC-SPIA under the grant Strengthening Impact Assessment in the CGIAR System (SIAC). The contributions of Godwin Ashumuga, Peter Kulakow and Alfred Dixon to the conceptualization and design of this project is gratefully acknowledged. Field supervisors, enumerators, extension agents, NRCRI staffs and IITA staff from socioeconomics, bioscience, and cassava breeding units are recognized and thanked for their contributions.

Suggested Citation

  • Alene, A.D. & Wossen, T. & Abdoulaye, T., 2018. "Poverty Reduction Effects of Technology Adoption: Evidence from Nigeria," 2018 Conference, July 28-August 2, 2018, Vancouver, British Columbia 276980, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:iaae18:276980
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.276980
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/276980/files/447.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.276980?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. Thirtle, Colin & Lin, Lin & Piesse, Jenifer, 2003. "The Impact of Research-Led Agricultural Productivity Growth on Poverty Reduction in Africa, Asia and Latin America," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 31(12), pages 1959-1975, December.
    2. Di Zeng & Jeffrey Alwang & George W. Norton & Bekele Shiferaw & Moti Jaleta & Chilot Yirga, 2015. "Ex post impacts of improved maize varieties on poverty in rural Ethiopia," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 46(4), pages 515-526, July.
    3. James J. Heckman & Vytlacil, Edward J., 2007. "Econometric Evaluation of Social Programs, Part II: Using the Marginal Treatment Effect to Organize Alternative Econometric Estimators to Evaluate Social Programs, and to Forecast their Effects in New," Handbook of Econometrics, in: J.J. Heckman & E.E. Leamer (ed.), Handbook of Econometrics, edition 1, volume 6, chapter 71, Elsevier.
    4. Feleke, Shiferaw & Manyong, Victor & Abdoulaye, Tahirou & Alene, Arega D., 2016. "Assessing the impacts of cassava technology on poverty reduction in Africa," Studies in Agricultural Economics, Research Institute for Agricultural Economics, vol. 118(2), pages 1-11, August.
    5. James J. Heckman & Edward Vytlacil, 2005. "Structural Equations, Treatment Effects, and Econometric Policy Evaluation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 73(3), pages 669-738, May.
    6. Tavneet Suri, 2011. "Selection and Comparative Advantage in Technology Adoption," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 79(1), pages 159-209, January.
    7. Daniel A Kamhöfer & Hendrik Schmitz & Matthias Westphal, 2019. "Heterogeneity in Marginal Non-Monetary Returns to Higher Education," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 17(1), pages 205-244.
    8. Arega D. Alene & Abebe Menkir & S. O. Ajala & B. Badu‐Apraku & A. S. Olanrewaju & V. M. Manyong & Abdou Ndiaye, 2009. "The economic and poverty impacts of maize research in West and Central Africa," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 40(5), pages 535-550, September.
    9. Krishnan, Pramila & Patnam, Manasa, 2013. "Neighbours and Extension Agents in Ethiopia: Who matters more for technology diffusion?," CEPR Discussion Papers 9539, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    10. Ma, Wanglin & Abdulai, Awudu, 2016. "Does cooperative membership improve household welfare? Evidence from apple farmers in China," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 94-102.
    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. Wiredu, Alexander Nimo & Manda, Julius & Feleke, Shiferaw & Asante, Bright Owusu & Savala, Canon Engoke & Kyei-Boahen, Stephen & Manyong, Victor & Alene, Arega, 2021. "Impacts of Quality Seeds of Improved Legume Varieties on Incomes and Poverty in Mozambique: An Ordered Choice Endogenous Switching Regression Analysis," 2021 Conference, August 17-31, 2021, Virtual 315294, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    2. Junying Lin & Zhonggen Zhang & Lingli Lv, 2019. "The Impact of Program Participation on Rural Household Income: Evidence from China’s Whole Village Poverty Alleviation Program," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(6), pages 1-15, March.
    3. Simeon Olatayo Jekayinfa & Joseph Ifeolu Orisaleye & Ralf Pecenka, 2020. "An Assessment of Potential Resources for Biomass Energy in Nigeria," Resources, MDPI, vol. 9(8), pages 1-43, August.

    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. Elisa Gerten & Michael Beckmann & Elisa Gerten & Matthias Kräkel, 2022. "Information and Communication Technology, Hierarchy, and Job Design," ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series 189, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.
    2. Matthias Westphal & Daniel A Kamhöfer & Hendrik Schmitz, 2022. "Marginal College Wage Premiums Under Selection Into Employment," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 132(646), pages 2231-2272.
    3. Cornelissen, Thomas & Dustmann, Christian & Raute, Anna & Schönberg, Uta, 2016. "From LATE to MTE: Alternative methods for the evaluation of policy interventions," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 47-60.
    4. Marenya, Paswel P. & Erenstein, Olaf & Prasanna, Boddupalli & Makumbi, Dan & Jumbo, MacDonald & Beyene, Yoseph, 2018. "Maize lethal necrosis disease: Evaluating agronomic and genetic control strategies for Ethiopia and Kenya," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 220-228.
    5. Adam, Baba & Abdulai, Awudu, 2022. "Heterogeneity in the Impact of Conservation Agriculture Practices on Farm Performance and Inorganic Fertilizer Use in Ghana," Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 47(2), May.
    6. Alwang, Jeffrey & Gotor, Elisabetta & Thiele, Graham & Hareau, Guy & Jaleta, Moti & Chamberlin, Jordan, 2019. "Pathways from research on improved staple crop germplasm to poverty reduction for smallholder farmers," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 172(C), pages 16-27.
    7. Gathmann, Christina & Vonnahme, Christina & Busse, Anna & Kim, Jongoh, 2021. "Marginal returns to citizenship and educational performance," Ruhr Economic Papers 920, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    8. Wossen, Tesfamicheal & Alene, Arega & Abdoulaye, Tahirou & Feleke, Shiferaw & Manyong, Victor, 2019. "Agricultural technology adoption and household welfare: Measurement and evidence," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 1-1.
    9. Ainembabazi, John Herbert & Abdoulaye, Tahirou & Feleke, Shiferaw & Alene, Arega & Dontsop-Nguezet, Paul M. & Ndayisaba, Pierre Celestin & Hicintuka, Cyrille & Mapatano, Sylvain & Manyong, Victor, 2018. "Who benefits from which agricultural research-for-development technologies? Evidence from farm household poverty analysis in Central Africa," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 28-46.
    10. Musa Hasen Ahmed & Hiwot Mekonnen Mesfin, 2017. "The impact of agricultural cooperatives membership on the wellbeing of smallholder farmers: empirical evidence from eastern Ethiopia," Agricultural and Food Economics, Springer;Italian Society of Agricultural Economics (SIDEA), vol. 5(1), pages 1-20, December.
    11. Shikuku, K.M., 2018. "Information exchange links, knowledge exposure, and adoption of agricultural technologies in Northern Uganda," 2018 Conference, July 28-August 2, 2018, Vancouver, British Columbia 275974, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    12. Kassie, Menale & Stage, Jesper & Diiro, Gracious & Muriithi, Beatrice & Muricho, Geoffrey & Ledermann, Samuel T. & Pittchar, Jimmy & Midega, Charles & Khan, Zeyaur, 2018. "Push–pull farming system in Kenya: Implications for economic and social welfare," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 186-198.
    13. Heckman, James J. & Urzúa, Sergio, 2010. "Comparing IV with structural models: What simple IV can and cannot identify," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 156(1), pages 27-37, May.
    14. repec:hum:wpaper:sfb649dp2012-042 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Holden , Stein & Fischer, Monica, 2015. "Can Adoption of Improved Maize Varieties Help Smallholder Farmers Adapt to Drought? Evidence from Malawi," CLTS Working Papers 1/15, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Centre for Land Tenure Studies, revised 11 Oct 2019.
    16. Huber Martin & Wüthrich Kaspar, 2019. "Local Average and Quantile Treatment Effects Under Endogeneity: A Review," Journal of Econometric Methods, De Gruyter, vol. 8(1), pages 1-27, January.
    17. Heckman, James J. & Schmierer, Daniel & Urzua, Sergio, 2010. "Testing the correlated random coefficient model," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 158(2), pages 177-203, October.
    18. Jeremy Foltz & Ursula Aldana & Paul Laris, 2014. "The Sahel's Silent Maize Revolution: Analyzing Maize Productivity in Mali at the Farm Level," NBER Chapters, in: African Successes, Volume IV: Sustainable Growth, pages 111-136, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Ivan A Canay & Magne Mogstad & Jack Mount, 2024. "On the Use of Outcome Tests for Detecting Bias in Decision Making," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 91(4), pages 2135-2167.
    20. Sloczynski, Tymon, 2018. "A General Weighted Average Representation of the Ordinary and Two-Stage Least Squares Estimands," IZA Discussion Papers 11866, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    21. Robert A. Moffitt & Matthew V. Zahn, 2019. "The Marginal Labor Supply Disincentives of Welfare: Evidence from Administrative Barriers to Participation," NBER Working Papers 26028, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Food Security and Poverty;

    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:iaae18:276980. 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/iaaeeea.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.