In Sickness and in Health: Risk Sharing within Households in Rural Ethiopia

Dercon, Stefan; Krishnan, Pramila

doi:10.1086/316098

Cited by 436 publications

(147 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…3 Studies examining risk sharing within households find less support for the assumption of cooperative decision making. Dercon and Krishnan (2000) find that poor households in southern Ethiopia do not engage in complete risk sharing; women in these households bear the brunt of adverse shocks. Doss (2001) finds that in Ghana shocks to men's and women's incomes have different effects on household expenditure patterns, suggesting that household members may be concerned about their individual long-term access to resources and that membership in a household is one way, but not the only way, to ensure this access.…”

Section: Empirical Literature On Cooperative and Noncooperative Outcomesmentioning

confidence: 89%

Are Household Production Decisions Cooperative? Evidence on Pastoral Migration and Milk Sales from Northern Kenya

McPeak

Doss

2006

American J Agri Economics

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Market-based development efforts frequently create opportunities to generate income from goods previously produced and consumed within the household. Production within the household is often characterized by a gender and age division of labor. Market development efforts to improve well being may lead to unanticipated outcomes if household production decisions are non-cooperative. We develop and test models of household decision-making to investigate intra-household decision making in a nomadic pastoral setting from Kenya. Our results suggest that household decisions are contested, with husbands using migration decisions to resist wives' ability to market milk.

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Section: Empirical Literature On Cooperative and Noncooperative Outcomesmentioning

confidence: 89%

Are Household Production Decisions Cooperative? Evidence on Pastoral Migration and Milk Sales from Northern Kenya

McPeak

Doss

2006

American J Agri Economics

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“…Central questions addressed in the empirical literature have been whether there is any evidence of complete risk-sharing both in communities in developing country as in a wide variety of settings, including the US and how (partial or complete) risk-sharing is obtained. The tests have generally found that complete risk-sharing has to be rejected, including in the US, in communities in India, in extended families in the PSID or even within nuclear households in Ethiopia (Townsend 1994, Hayashi et al 1996, Dercon and Krishnan 2000b. Nevertheless, the evidence is consistent with partial risk-sharing.…”

Section: Informal Risk-sharing and Safety Netsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Behrman and Deolalikar (1990), using data on individual nutrient intakes from India, report that estimated price and wage elasticities of intakes are substantially and significantly higher for females than for males, suggesting that women and girls share a disproportionate burden of rising food prices. Dercon and Krishnan (2000b) test risk-sharing within rural households in Ethiopia. Adult nutrition is used to investigate whether individuals are able to smooth their consumption and within the household over the seasons.…”

Section: Risk Household Responses and Consequencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Income Risk, Coping Strategies, and Safety Nets

Dercon

2002

The World Bank Research Observer

787

545

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High income risk is part of life in developing countries. Climatic risks, economic fluctuations, but also a large number of individual-specific shocks make these households vulnerable to serious hardship. For example, details are given on the various shocks and events causing serious hardship to rural households in Ethiopia in the last twenty years. Not surprisingly for Ethiopia, climatic events are the most common cause of shocks, but many households suffer from other common or idiosyncratic shocks related to economic policy, labour or livestock.Rural and urban households in developing countries face substantial risk. Households in risky environments have developed sophisticated (ex ante) risk-management and (ex post) risk-coping strategies, including self-insurance via savings and informal insurance mechanisms while formal credit and insurance markets appear to contribute only little to reducing income risk and its consequences. Despite these strategies, vulnerability to poverty linked to risk remains high. In this paper, I focus on the opportunities available to households to use risk-management and risk-coping strategies, and on the constraints on their effectiveness, by reviewing some of the recent literature on savings as insurance, income diversification and smoothing, and informal risk-sharing arrangements. Risk and lumpiness limit the opportunities to use assets as insurance. Entry constraints limit the usefulness of income diversification. Informal risk-sharing only provides limited protection, especially for some of the poor and their sustainability during periods of change is in doubt. Public safety nets are likely to be beneficial, but their impact is at times limited while they may have negative externalities on households not covered by the safety net. The paper also discusses the implications for policy as well as the information requirements to increase our understanding of vulnerability and implement better vulnerability reducing policies.

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“…Dercon and Krishnan (2000) find that women in poor households have especially little bargaining power and so bear the brunt of illness shocks. Liquidity-constrained households in their sample are compelled to allocate scarce resources to those members who are more productive or more likely to survive.…”

Section: Bargaining and Illnessmentioning

confidence: 96%

Intra-household labor allocation in colonial Nigeria

Arthi

Fenske

2016

Explorations in Economic History

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Abstract. We use a year-long panel of time-use data from colonial Nigeria to show that labor complementarities and strategic concerns shaped the time-use decisions of African households. Using quantitative and ethnographic approaches, we show that health shocks imposed time costs that followed the gender division of labor. The labor of others did not automatically compensate for this. Whether individuals could respond by recruiting substitutes depended on social standing, urgency of work, and type of illness. Labor was coordinated between spouses. Child labor was coordinated with parental work, aided childcare, and allowed children to build skills and resources.

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In Sickness and in Health: Risk Sharing within Households in Rural Ethiopia

Cited by 436 publications

References 39 publications

Are Household Production Decisions Cooperative? Evidence on Pastoral Migration and Milk Sales from Northern Kenya

Are Household Production Decisions Cooperative? Evidence on Pastoral Migration and Milk Sales from Northern Kenya

Income Risk, Coping Strategies, and Safety Nets

Intra-household labor allocation in colonial Nigeria

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