Too little too late: welfare impacts of rainfall shocks in rural Indonesia

Abstract

We use regression analysis to assess the potential welfare impacts in rural Indonesia of two types of shock: a delay in monsoon onset; and a significant shortfall in rain during the 90-day post-onset period. Focusing on households with family farm businesses, we find that a delay in monsoon onset does not have a significant effect on the welfare of rice farmers. However, rice farm households located in areas exposed to low rainfall following the monsoon are negatively affected. Such households appear to be able to protect their food expenditure in the face of weather shocks, but at the expense of their non-food expenditure. We also use propensity score matching to identify community programs that might moderate the impact of this type of shock. We find that access to credit and public works projects has the strongest moderating effect. This is an important consideration for the design and implementation of adaptation strategies.

Rainfall variability and welfare of agricultural households: Evidence from rural Niger

“…Our results also indirectly support previous empirical findings on the impact of weather shocks on well‐being of rural households (Baez et al., 2017; Carpena, 2019; Gao & Mills, 2018; Skoufias & Vinha, 2013; Skoufias et al., 2012). Most of these studies have focused on global welfare indicators and few (Carpena, 2019) have gone beyond total household expenditure to investigate the effects of weather shocks on different types of households’ food expenditures.…”

“…Despite this relevance of weather variability in understanding patterns of well‐being, there is limited evidence on the welfare implications of variability in weather in rainfed agrarian areas. To assess the implications of the increase in global warming for well‐being, the previous literature has rather put the emphasis on how well‐being responds to realized weather shocks (Baez et al., 2017; Carpena, 2019; Gao & Mills, 2018; Skoufias & Vinha, 2013; Skoufias et al., 2012). But large evidence on incomplete consumption smoothing suggests that weather variability can lead to a significant reduction in contemporaneous consumption.…”

Climate shocks constrain human fertility in Indonesia

“…We elected to transform data into z-scores, which are equivalent to standardized climate anomalies, as they are arguably more effective at illustrating deviations from expected patterns and can better predict other social responses to climate shocks, such as migration (Gray & Wise, 2016). Given strong correlation between precipitation volume and monsoon onset delay, most of our model specifications are run without the precipitation volume variable, as monsoon onset delay is more established in the literature as a predictor of rice production (Korkeala, Newhouse, & Duarte, 2009;Naylor et al, 2007;Skoufias et al, 2012). These climate variables were then linked to the month and year that the survey was administered to an individual, thus generating climate variables unique to each community by month pairing.…”

“…Birth weights are significantly higher in Indonesia for children born immediately following the main rice harvest than children born at other times of the year (Yamauchi, 2012). Based on Indonesian data from 1999 and 2000, monsoon onset delays, but not reductions in postonset precipitation volume are significantly associated with reductions in food expenditures among rural households (Skoufias, Katayama, & Essama-Nssah, 2012).…”

Gender and Equity Considerations for Building Climate Resilience: Lessons from Rural and Periurban Botswana

“…The most vulnerable populations in Botswana are concentrated in rural areas, where livelihoods are mainly dependent on rain-fed agriculture and other activities related to farming and natural resource management [10,11]. This economic system exposes these populations to climatic shocks and stressors.…”