IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/16594.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Health Shocks and Natural Resource Management: Evidence from Western Kenya

Author

Listed:
  • Joshua Graff Zivin
  • Maria Damon
  • Harsha Thirumurthy

Abstract

Poverty and altered planning horizons brought on by the HIV/AIDS epidemic can change individual discount rates, altering incentives to conserve natural resources. Using longitudinal data from household surveys in western Kenya, we estimate impacts of health status on labor productivity and discount rates. We find that household size and composition are predictors of whether the effect on productivity dominates the discount rate effect, or vice-versa. Since households with more and younger members are better able to reallocate labor to cope with productivity shocks, the discount rate impact dominates for these households and health improvements lead to greater levels of conservation. In smaller families with less substitutable labor, the productivity impact dominates and health improvements lead to greater environmental degradation.

Suggested Citation

  • Joshua Graff Zivin & Maria Damon & Harsha Thirumurthy, 2010. "Health Shocks and Natural Resource Management: Evidence from Western Kenya," NBER Working Papers 16594, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:16594
    Note: EEE HE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w16594.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hanan G. Jacoby & Emmanuel Skoufias, 1997. "Risk, Financial Markets, and Human Capital in a Developing Country," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 64(3), pages 311-335.
    2. Harsha Thirumurthy & Joshua Graff Zivin & Markus Goldstein, 2008. "The Economic Impact of AIDS Treatment: Labor Supply in Western Kenya," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 43(3), pages 511-552.
    3. John Fitzgerald & Peter Gottschalk & Robert Moffitt, 1998. "An Analysis of the Impact of Sample Attrition on the Second Generation of Respondents in the Michigan Panel Study of Income Dynamics," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 33(2), pages 300-344.
    4. Loevinsohn, Michael & Gillespie, Stuart, 2003. "HIV/AIDS, food security and rural livelihoods," FCND briefs 157, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    5. Pitt, Mark M & Rosenzweig, Mark R & Hassan, Md Nazmul, 1990. "Productivity, Health, and Inequality in the Intrahousehold Distribution of Food in Low-Income Countries," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(5), pages 1139-1156, December.
    6. Deolalikar, Anil B, 1988. "Nutrition and Labor Productivity in Agriculture: Estimates for Rural South India," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 70(3), pages 406-413, August.
    7. repec:spr:portec:v:1:y:2002:i:2:d:10.1007_s10258-002-0008-x is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Strauss, John & Thomas, Duncan, 1995. "Human resources: Empirical modeling of household and family decisions," Handbook of Development Economics,in: Hollis Chenery & T.N. Srinivasan (ed.), Handbook of Development Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 34, pages 1883-2023 Elsevier.
    9. Swinkels, R.A. & Franzel, S. & Shepherd, K.D. & Ohlsson, E. & Ndufa, J.K., 1997. "The economics of short rotation improved fallows: evidence from areas of high population density in Western Kenya," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 55(1), pages 99-121, September.
    10. Jeffrey M. Wooldridge, 2002. "Inverse probability weighted M-estimators for sample selection, attrition and stratification," CeMMAP working papers CWP11/02, Centre for Microdata Methods and Practice, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    11. Kochar, Anjini, 1995. "Explaining Household Vulnerability to Idiosyncratic Income Shocks," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(2), pages 159-164, May.
    12. S.J. Goldie & Y. Yazdanpanah & E. Losina & M.C. Weinstein & X. Anglaret & R.P. Walensky & H.E. Hsu & A. Kimmel & C. Holmes & J.E. Kaplan & K.A. Freedberg, 2006. "Cost-effectiveness of HIV treatment in Resource-Poor Settings - The case of Côte d'Ivoire," Post-Print hal-00199992, HAL.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I1 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health
    • O13 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Agriculture; Natural Resources; Environment; Other Primary Products
    • O55 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Africa
    • Q27 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Renewable Resources and Conservation - - - Issues in International Trade
    • Q5 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics
    • Q56 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Environment and Development; Environment and Trade; Sustainability; Environmental Accounts and Accounting; Environmental Equity; Population Growth

    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:nbr:nberwo:16594. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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 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.

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.