Background In recognition of the potential importance of road access in the provision of and request for agricultural extension services, this study investigates whether and to what extent access to paved roads would influence farmers’ access to extension services, using a nationally representative sample of households and communities in Malawi. Our study proposes an extension access measure that reflects the diversity of agricultural topics and extension service providers available in the village where farmers resided, which commonly is captured in a binary fashion of “contact” with extension agents. Method The level of extension access is measured in the form of count data, and we employ a hurdle negative binomial regression model to account for unobserved farmer heterogeneity and excessive zeros that represent a group of farmers who received no extension services due to a lack of supply of extension opportunities in the village or a lack of demand. Results We find a negative and non-linear relationship between access to paved roads and extension services, showing that, on average, the extent of access to extension services decreased by 14.1 percent as a farmer’s residence was one log of distance away from the nearest paved road. Women farmers had considerably lower extension access scores by 24.3 percent than men, indicating the prevalence of the country’s deeply rooted cultural and gender barriers. Furthermore, serving as lead farmers, human capital and economic characteristics, and extension resources available in the village—such as the number of extension agents and demonstration and farm trials—are identified as factors having a sizable contribution to determining the extent of extension access. Conclusion Our study findings will provide empirical evidence that answers questions raised by past studies concerning the relationship among roads, agricultural extension, productivity, and other economic outcomes. Also, it will inform future research about the access to agricultural extension and agricultural development nexus.

Background This study examined the effect of linking small-scale women farmers to markets, referred to as community marketing, and homestead food production extension services in two districts of rural Bangladesh. Method We particularly focused on identifying the relationship between treatment and food security, monthly expenditure patterns, and food production and marketing by adopting a doubly robust method that mediated bias from project site selection and potential misspecification of the postulated outcome or treatment model. Results The main results showed that establishing community marketing sites along with extension services provided women farmers a secured marketing outlet for food production, plausibly associated with a decreased likelihood of a reduction in monthly expenditures on healthcare (12.7 percentage points), child education (19.4 percentage points), and transportation (51.5 percentage points) during the lean season. However, if farmers did not spend extra income generated from marketing on food purchases, it would be difficult to anticipate an improvement in food security. Conclusion Community marketing was devised to link women smallholders to the markets without conflicting with social and cultural norms for which women were responsive, and our research findings supported the claim that they benefited from community marketing participation. Therefore, government, NGO, or other extension providers looking for a culturally appropriate approach to address women farmers’ limited mobility may consider using or modifying community marketing.

This study examines the early effect of work requirements on mental health of subsidized housing recipients. The Housing Authority of Champaign County (HACC) enforced work requirements for working-aged and non-disabled recipients and supported their transition to work with case management services. In addition, non-compliance with work requirements might result in the loss of housing subsidy. We collected survey data 1 year prior to and 1 year following the implementation of HACC’s work requirements to compare changes in mental health measures between work-able recipients who were and were not subject to work requirements. We calculate the average treatment effects on the treated estimates obtained from difference-in-differences with propensity score matching to control potential bias stemming from unobserved time-invariant variables and support the model’s parallel trend assumption. Our main results show that, during the early phase of work requirements, impacted heads of households were predicted to increase depression scores and decrease hopefulness scores relative to changes in mental health measures of the matched control groups over the same period. Recipients’ mental health would play a critical role in the success of HACC’s self-sufficiency strategies, and therefore the housing authority may strengthen the transition of hard-to-employ recipients into the workforce by offering careful assessment and screening to identify recipients with serious mental health problems or other employment barriers and reinforcing their access to supportive health and social services.