This paper assesses rural households’ decision to use improved maize varieties in Malawi and examines its impact on household welfare using a three-year household panel data. The distributional effect of maize technology adoption is investigated by looking at impacts across wealth and gender...

This paper evaluates the ex post impact of adopting improved groundnut varieties on crop income and poverty in rural Uganda. The study utilizes cross-sectional data of 927 households, collected in 2006, from seven districts in Uganda. Using propensity score matching methods, we find that...

Empirical studies across many developing countries routinely document a positive correlation between participation in rural nonfarm employment and households’ wealth or income. This paper explores whether nonfarm employment leads to higher consumption expenditure growth in Ethiopia. We find...

Summary Although many African countries have recently adopted highly innovative and pro-poor land laws, lack of implementation thwarts their potentially far-reaching impact on productivity, poverty reduction, and governance. We use a representative household survey from Ethiopia where, over a...

This study examines current land access and livelihood choices of rural youth in Southern Ethiopia. We found that youth in rural south have limited access to agricultural land because of land scarcity and land market restrictions. We hypothesize that this forces the youth to abandon agriculture...