Are Irrigation Rehabilitation Projects Good for Poor Farmers in Peru?

Datar, Gayatri ; Del Carpio, Ximena V.

关键词: ACCESS TO MARKETS;    AGGREGATE POVERTY;    AGRICULTURAL ACTIVITIES;    AGRICULTURAL GROWTH;    AGRICULTURAL LABORERS;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-5154
RP-ID  :  WPS5154

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

This paper analyzes changes inagricultural production and economic welfare of farmers inrural Peru resulting from a large irrigation infrastructurerehabilitation project.The analysis uses a ten-yeardistrict panel and a spatial regression discontinuityapproach to measure the causal effect of the intervention.While general impacts are modest, the analysis shows thatthe project is progressive--poor farmers consistentlybenefit more than non-poor farmers.Farmers living indistricts with a rehabilitated irrigation site experiencepositive labor dynamics, in terms of income and agriculturaljobs.Poor farmers increase their total income by more than$220 per year compared with the control group, while richfarmers do not experience such an income gain.The resultsalso show crop specialization patterns in the economicstatus of farm households; poorer farm households increasetheir production of staple crops, such as beans andpotatoes, while non-poor beneficiary farmers cultivate moreindustrial crops.Findings from this evaluation haveimportant implications for pro-poor policy design in theagricultural sector.