Environmental degradation and intra household welfare: The case of the Tanzanian rural south Pare highlands
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Date
2009
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Wageningen University. Wageningen
Abstract
The rural South Pare highlands in Tanzania experience a deteriorating environmental
situation. The causes of environmental degradation arc population growth, deforestation,
poor fanning techniques, and weak forestry regulatory frameworks. Of particular
importance is the disappearance of forests and woodlands. The consequences are declining
amounts and reliability of rainfall, lower water levels and loss of biodiversity. Deterioration
of environmental resources increases the costs of collecting environmental products, which
in many respects have no feasible close substitutes. One of the major components of the
increased costs is labour time allocated by household members to collecting environmental
products and'or grazing activities. This reallocation of intra-houschold labour resources
may have different cl Teets on welfare for different members of a household. Degradation of
the local environmental resource base is expected to adversely affect women and children
more than men. Furthermore, labour time reallocation may interfere with labour allocated
to other agricultural activities in the area. In addition, it could drain much of the time
children allocate to schooling activities, which may have negative implications for their
school attainment and the quality of their human capital in the long ran. Lastly, intra-
houschold labour resource reallocation may influence the subjective welfare and well-being
of households.
This study presents an empirical analysis of these effects. The analysis is based on
cross-sectional data collected in 2006/2007 from households in the Tanzania's rural South
Pare highlands. The study was guided by four hypotheses each of which formed the basis of
an empirical chapter of the thesis.
The first empirical chapter is Chapter 3, in which we investigated whether the
deteriorating environmental resources had an 'adverse impact ' on intra-household labour
allocation. We applied the neo-classical model of an agricultural household. Io analyse
how variations in environmental degradation affect intra-household labour allocation, three
types of areas were distinguished: severely-degraded, medium-degraded, and non-degraded
environments. Since many individuals spent zero hours on some activities, we corrected for
selection bias by using Heckman's two-step selection method. The results show that
environmental products collection and/or grazing activities in South Pare were gender
biased with husbands specializing in grazing while wives and children specialized in
fetching water and fuel wood. Secondly, we found that environmental products collection
and/or grazing time by the household members was. almost in all groups and in accordance
with gender-biased activity, significantly influenced by the environmental conditions.
Thirdly, we noticed that if a spouse or a schoolchild had participated in an intra-household
activity, his/her time in the work had a significant impact on the time spent by the other
spouse in that particular activity, especially in water and fuel wood fetching for household
use.
In Chapter 4, we analysed whether environmental degradation led to lower
agricultural production and household consumption of home-produced meals prepared
from staple food crops, namely, maize, beans, millet and paddy. Since the crop outputs
weighed differently, we used the monetary value of their yields as a common scale. The
amount of food consumed was expressed in calories per person, per day. The basis of the
theoretical framework was a neo-classical model of agricultural household production. We estimated the model with two-stage least squares (2SI.S) to control lor the endogeneity of
production and consumption within households. The estimation results of the agricultural
production equation show that agricultural output was significantly related to consumption
of these crops, environmental degradation conditions, total cropped land, fertilizer
application, ox-plough use and total extra-income accrued from other sources minus the
monetary value of their own-domestic consumption. With regard to the home-produced
meals, the results indicate that their consumption is significantly related to the agricultural
output, environmental degradation, household income, and household size.
In the final analysis, both descriptive and regression results indicate that there are
strong possibilities that environmental degradation is limiting the production and
consumption potential in the area and that a limited adoption of agricultural modernization
further aggravates this problem.
In Chapter 5. we examined whether the school attainment of children m rural
primary schools, with respect to their gender, was inversely affected by deteriorating
environmental resources. The basis of this analysis were the prior results showing that
schoolchildren were involved in the work, supporting their households' livelihoods,
including housework, farming, collecting scarce environmental products and/or grazing.
This type of child labour frequently led to foregone schooling, which may have critical
consequences for educational achievements.
Since the grade to age school attainment, our dependent variable, is an ordinal
variable, which indicates a ranking of school attainment, we used ordered probit estimation
techniques. The results show that the probability of educational attainment at primary
school, was found to be significantly associated with age. age-squared, and the mother's
secondary education. The formal employment status of the mother at government offices
significantly, but differently, affected the probability of educational attainment of both
schoolgirls and schoolboys separately, but not in the pooled estimates. The household
ethnicity, i.e.. belonging to the Sambaa tribe, significantly decreased the probability of
schoolgirls to progress at primary school, as compared with other tribes. Interestingly, in
the severely-degraded environment as compared with the non-degraded area, the
probability that girls would progress at school decreased significantly. However, the
environmental degradation situation neither had significant impact for schoolboys in their
educational attainment nor for schoolgirls and schoolboys pooled together.
Our basic findings further show that there were other factors (like school
erowdedness. illness, bud weather, poor school quality, and school absenteeism due to
street vending) that affected the probability of school attainment for the schoolchildren
apart from the environmental degradation situation. Reasons for this were twofold, l-'irstly.
girls and boys spent, on average, the same number of hours per week in school activities
across environmental conditions. Secondly, deteriorating resources like environmental
products collection and/or grazing, work at home, and work on the farms, each contributed
only marginally to total primary school late entry, negatively affecting the girls only.
In Chapter 6. we investigated whether the household subjective economic welfare
was inversely affected by deteriorating environmental resources. The first objective of this
section was Io study the individual welfare function. We applied a lognormal welfare
function of income to analyze the income evaluation question (I EQ). The average estimated
values of the want parameter of the individual welfare function, denoting the log-income
evaluated al 0.5 on the [0.11 welfare scale, were found to be 4.46 for husbands and 4.39 for wives, corresponding with 86,487 and XU.M(J Tanzanian Shillings, respectively. There
amounts of income were evaluated as insufficient on average. The evaluated income was
well above the official Government minimum wage in 2006 2007 of 75.340 Tanzanian
Shillings per month, suggesting that individuals in South Pare needed an income well above
the official monthly minimum wage to experience even an insufficient income.
The results of the extended model show that, for both husbands and a wives, the
individual welfare parameter significantly increased with an increase in household income,
use ol scarce environmental products, namely, fuel wood and waler, and household
consumption of the survey crops. Ihe want parameter for husbands alone also increased
with education, while the want parameter for wives alone also increased with having an
occupation. I aking the ceteris paribus condition, the results show that an increase in the use
of these scarce environmental products would obviously lead to higher opportunity costs,
which, in turn, would increase the want welfare parameter. This suggested that the
individual would need higher income through the exponential of the want parameter to
maintain the same welfare level.
The second objective of the Chapter 6 was to examine subjective well-being. The
results of an ordered probit model showed that subjective well-being was negatively
influenced by environmental degradation. That is. living in a medium-degraded area, as
compared with a non-degraded environment, significantly decreased the husband's well
being. A w ife perceived lower well-being if she happened to live in a severely-degraded
place, while a schoolchild fell unhappy living in either a medium or a severely-degraded
environment. I he findings in Chapter 3 already described that environmental degradation
influenced the burden of labour (thus affecting well-being) differently to each family
member depending on the gender of a person.
Furthermore, household income had a significant positive influence on the
husband's well-being, while the time he spent on domestic chores and the interaction of
household size and income reduced his probability of well-being. The well-being of the
wife was significantly non-linear in the effect of age. decreasing after the age of 60.5 years.
The results further show that the well-being of a wife was also negatively associated with
the time she spent on domestic chores and grazing, thus supporting the findings that women
in the area associated many of their health problems with their heavy domestic
responsibilities.
This study is instrumental in understanding the problems of sustainable
development, poverty alleviation, environmental policy and the position of women. Policies
designed to preserve the natural resource base (e.g., forestry projects) would be
recommended in view of long-run benefits. Short-run strategies would include improving
production technologies and persuading household members to grow drought-resistant
crops. Lastly, policy makers need to devise overall strategics that would stimulate high
economic growth rates in both the medium and long term.
The findings of this study may be strengthened by the availability of longitudinal
data, to reveal a pattern of change in relation to time. This will need a longer period of
research.
Description
Keywords
Environmental Degradation, Household Welfare, Pare Highlands, Tanzania, Resources