Heterogeneous impact of livelihood diversification on household welfare: Cross-country evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa

Income diversification and household welfare in Tanzania 2008–2013

“…This motivates investigating how income diversification has changed. Asfaw et al (2019) consider both crop and income diversification for farming households in Malawi, Niger, and Zambia (data for various years between 2010 and 2015) and find that poorest households tend to benefit most from diversification. Although 'income diversification is a welfare enhancing strategy in all the three countries', crop diversification has no effect on welfare in Niger and is positive in Malawi but 'a welfare decreasing strategy in Zambia' (Asfaw et al 2019: 286).…”

“…One is to construct discrete indicator variables based on numbers of sources or categories of types of income (Abdulai and CroleRees 2001). An alternative is to construct a Herfindahl index measure based on earning shares of multiple sources (Asfaw et al 2019). Earnings from self-employment (farm or NAS) were recorded at the household level in all waves.…”

“…Diversified sources of income are an important component of household livelihood strategies in low-income countries (Asfaw et al 2019; Van den Broeck and Kilic 2019) by increasing total income and spreading risk. Much of the literature addresses engagement of farming households in non-farm activities (e.g., Reardon et al 2007;Davis et al 2010;Loison 2015).…”

To diversify or not to diversify, that is the question. Pursuing agricultural development for smallholder farmers in marginal areas of Ghana

“…Maintaining on farm crop diversity has usually been associated with risk-coping strategies (Asfaw et al, 2019, Di Falco and Chavas, 2009, Di Falco and Perrings, 2005, Lin, 2011, McCord et al, 2015); however, there is increasing recognition of other benefits as well, particularly under poorly functioning markets. These benefits include optimizing crop production under heterogeneous agro-ecological conditions in rainfed marginal areas (Benin et al, 2004, Di Falco and Chavas, 2009, Kawa et al, 2015); producing a variety of products for different uses (Keleman et al, 2013, King, 2007); providing commercial opportunities in multiple local markets (Devaux et al, 2009, McCord et al, 2015); as well as reducing vulnerability to market and climate variability (Benin et al, 2004, Lin, 2011, McCord et al, 2015).…”

Impact of Livelihood Diversification on Rural Household Food Security: Evidence from Goncha-Siso-Enesie Destrict of Amhara Regional State, Ethiopia

“…Firstly, studies like [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26] were not employed the appropriate econometric model which minimizes the sample selection problem which is main task in impact evaluation. Secondly, some studies for instance [3,[4][5][6][7][8][9] tried to estimate its impact on general economic terms like poverty and welfare which are so difficult to proxy in single indicator. Thirdly, even if commercial forests (e.g.…”