The Province of East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) had been one of the major beef cattle suppliers under traditional management system in Indonesia. The beef cattle farming that based on grazing native pasture and the introduction of shrub legumes (Leucaena leucocephala) may contribute to around 15 – 50% of the farmers' household income. In the last few years, supply of beef cattle tended to decline due to the decrease in cattle population in NTT. Some basic improvements in management and feeding toward increasing beef cattle productivities had been carried out in Nusa Tenggara, such as a baseline survey on Cattle Health and Productivity Survey (CHAPS) conducted in 1990 – 1992. The objective of the program was to identify the existing beef cattle productivity and health condition throughout Nusa Tenggara. A collaborative research with the Ministry of Research and Technology (Integrated Prime Research) had also been carried out and the result showed that early weaning in Bali calves that can be practised as early as 3 – 6 months to prevent calves losses during the dry season. A program of the Assessment on Beef Cattle Base Farming Activities had also been conducted to improve fattening and breeding practices through the improvement in beef cattle management and feeding systems. At the latest development, fattening scheme has been introduced under a partnership approach involving private sectors and cooperatives. This needs to be facilitated by the government to accelerate the program such as access to capital and intensive extension services to build farmers awareness toward profit oriented beef cattle farming. Optimalization of the available potential resources and technology in NTT, will be an opportunity to enhance beef cattle production and gains back the reputation as one of the major producing beef cattle in the past. This will also support the national livestock program nowadays, called Beef Cattle Self Sufficiency Program 2014. Key words: Beef cattle, productivity, technology, East Nusa Tenggara
SAD CT1 ; National audience ; The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that in certain countries farm multi-activity may be the dominant organizational model of agricultural production. The post-collectivist evolution of Albanian farms has been taken as an example. In the space of two years, from1993 to 1994, the agriculture sector was transformed from a totally collectivist into a totally private form. The collective land distribution created up to 420,000 individual micro farms, with an average area of 1.4 hectare. This agrarian reform undertaken to break down the socialist organisation of economy, had as its principal goal to ensure social peace in the countryside (in 1992 it represented 66 % of total population). About ten years now after the reform was applied, we have tried in this study to understand what the fundamental conditions for commercial farm development are in a post-collectivist economy. More particularly we are investigating how multi-activity is contributing to agricultural production organisation and to its market integration. To try to answer these questions we have conducted a socio-economic survey including 52 farms located in an important agricultural region of the country. The survey was completed in two different periods (1997 and 1999), with the same farmers and using an open questionnaire, concerning agricultural and non agricultural household activities. One of the main findings is essential: if an erosion of farm manpower can be noted, the proportion of multi-activity farms remains constant – there are more than 90 % of them. The positive evolution of the monetary agricultural incomes is faster than that of the non agricultural activities. ; L'objectif de cet article est de montrer que la pluriactivité dans les exploitations agricoles peut être le modèle canonique d'organisation de la production agricole dans certains pays, l'Albanie étant prise comme exemple. La redistribution, en 1993, de l'ensemble des terres auparavant gérées par l'État, a entraîné la création de 420 000 ...
Contrasting notions of social disorganization and social cohesion have been offered to describe community interaction after a natural disaster. Data were collected frow three independent community samples, beginning seven months after the 1994 Nortbridge, California, earthquake and following in one year intervals for the two subsequent samples. Exposure to traumatic stress (Norris 1990)-including criminal victimization-in the 12 months prior to the interview was assessed in each sample. For all traumatic stress/victimization and for each of seven individual events, rates remain flat over time (3 data points), suggesting that neither social disorganization nor social cohesion occurred after the earthquake. Owing to the timing of the survey, respondents interviewed in the first sample only could report on pre-disaster events. For these respondents, post-earthquake rates of traumatic stress and victimization were compared with pre-earthquake rates. In contrast to the trend data, reduction in rates of robbery and, to a lesser extent, major life changes suggest that an altruistic community (social cohesion) may have arisen. A third set of analyses show that severity of exposure to the earthquake does not make a contribution to traumatic stress or victimization beyond that explained by the demographic variables repeatedly found to predict vulnerability to victimization. Last, rates of criminal victimization within Los Angeles County are compared to rates for households in the United States, using the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) for the latter. Victimization rates are elevated in Los Angeles County but not necessarily above what might be expected if exactly equivalent definitions of crimes had been used in our study and the national data set, and if comparable breakdowns by demographic characteristics were available in the NCVS for metropolitan areas of one million and more. In sum, there is no indication that social disorganization follows a natural disaster, and there is minor support for the emergence of an altruistic community.
The Gabgachhia village is located in the coastal region of Bangladesh's Khulna district. It is one of the seven villages selected for the CCAFS midline household survey. The village was also selected for the village midline study (VMS). The community has witnessed multiple changes in resources, institutional setting, infrastructure and organizational activities, especially surrounding natural resources management as well as on food security issues, farming systems development and management. These changes might be attributable to a combination of factors among which population increase, different resource utilization and mobilization patterns, adoption of new varieties and as responses to climate change impacts. Although forests have been depleted, there are some initiatives to support roadside plantation and social forestry. The low productivity in farmlands due to rising salinity, flooding and the cultivation of inappropriate crop varieties has improved since the baseline with soil salinity problems lessening with time. The farmlands are usually rain-fed but initiatives for better irrigation with sluice-gate operations improved the situation and farmers reported adopting improved varieties. The drinking water situation is reported to have improved. However, in order to meet higher demands for water, the community has to collect significant amounts of water from around the area and from more distant communities. Initiatives to harvest rainwater and conserve water for the winter season are reported to have gained in popularity. Infrastructure is also reported to have improved but to not be enough to withstand population and environment pressures. Subsistence farming of rice, 'gher'-farming, as well as some fruit and vegetables production, aquaculture and limited poultry and livestock production are reported to be the main sources of food in Gabgachhia village. Improvement in available income generating opportunities, farming practices, agricultural production and in access to drinking water, as well as the setting up of a mother care centre, better education facilities for future generations, and finally, fully functioning canals and a greener environment were core aspects of the village's vision for the future. Many organizations are working in and around the village and beyond, representing the government, NGOs, private sector and international entities as well as community organizations. The organizations identified in the village focused on religion, education, health, income generation, loans, local governance, agriculture, fisheries, water and disasters response. The local government is central in providing and coordinating development activities and services. The community's organizations strongly support mosques and schools among others. Several organizations were reported to target food security related issues and improved nutrition, access to finance, capacity building for income generation, and water management. Some organizations were reported to shift their focus and provide assistance when a disaster or crisis occurred by providing food, clothing, drinking water, medicine and financial support to construct houses. The community also identified a handful of organizations addressing natural resource management, with a focus on water management infrastructure, biodiversity conservation, aquaculture and agroforestry training, and the provision of tree saplings. The analysis of linkages within and between organizations pointed out high levels of vertical linkages within organizations but limited horizontal linkages due to a lack of coordination between organizations. The organizations were noted to focus on their own efforts and to not engage with other institutions beyond the local government. Organizational support is provided on a regular basis and is especially active in times of needs. Yet, the lack of coordination and limited resources remain important constraints. The participants in the village midline study also reported on their means of access to information and provided details on their sources of information for weather, agriculture, livestock/poultry, aquaculture and disasters and other crisis related issues. Both formal and informal sources were noted to be popular in the community with the majority of information being shared between neighbours or acquired through the radio and television and through the government and local administration.
"If you ask people what they think about cities they are more likely to talk about buildings and cars than streets and squares. If you ask them about city life they are more likely to talk about alienation, isolation, fear of crime or congestion and pollution than about community, participation, animation, beauty and pleasure." (Rogers, 1997) The picturesque quoted here, illustrates the void that most of the modern cities are facing; unable to meet the demand of socio-cultural, ecological and communal characters of humankind for dwelling. The economic and political competency in the practice of urbanism makes an astonishing indifference towards vitality of urban spaces, which otherwise should have addressed the dynamics of urban life, people and community. To some extent, historic cities still express sense of place and identity of community at this juncture, though such elements in a few only remain authentic. Even though these cities went across century's long political, socio-economic transformation, they have retained the legacy of sustained urban life and environment. And of course, the same is the socio-cultural manifesto and charm into cityscape and built forms. For such occurrence, reconciliation of conservation and current trends of development and changes need to prove one of the substantial means of transiting from traditional city planning approaches. In this aspect, urban conservation added new hopes, bringing even the ruins of such historic cities for preservation and made them an agendum for further researches in city planning and development. However, most of the conservation efforts in historic cities are focused on individual public monuments as a piecemeal trade to enhance international tourism and market forces. Consequently, as a dark side remnant of overall city planning and conservation practices, the image of city and its identity remained overshadowed. As one of such instances; Bhaktapur, the city known to be "Cultural Capital of Nepal" stands right into this dilemma of urban development and conservation. The living heritage of this city resembles the bonds of urban spaces, built environment, and life endowed with cultural activities enthralled entirely. This paradise perhaps will no longer remain if its urban development trends at the edge are freed. Urban growth however, inevitable currently as globalization; in no longer should influence the urban tranquility of this historical city. The outdated planning traditions are responsible for such hiatus to long for ages. Due to this fragility, it concurrently faces vigorous peripheral development at Kamalvinayak, Libali and Tumacho and a rapid transformation in historic fabrics demising traditional values. An approach of integration in historic city especially, cultural heritage area with emerging new development is believed to arrest the problem when it is unripe. Further investigation on amorphous relationships between the two urban typologies and development contexts is crucial to explore potentialities for integration. The synergy between urban conservation and urban development in order to retain the historic image of a cultural city is explored through an integrated approach. This study explores to seek integrity aspects of historic urban landscape of the traditional town with planning interventions to meet the demands of urban development at the edge. The study area is mainly focused on clusters of neighbourhood in cultural heritage area of this town incorporating new development area at the edge and an urban design research approach with random household survey is adopted in comparing the neighbourhoods for integrity aspects. Finally with thorough review on related concerns in conservation and development in Bhaktapur this study identified the need of integrated urban conservation taking into consideration of integrity aspects idealized during analysis. Integrated urban conservation is one that reconciles development aspects with overall structure of conservation process and this study finalizes the need of strategies of broadening heritage context, strategies for conservation oriented development, urban spatial continuity and strategies for capacity building with participatory mechanism. ; published_or_final_version ; Urban Planning and Design ; Master ; Master of Science in Urban Planning
Introduction: In many affluent countries, including Israel, networks of food banks and pantries have increasing responsibility to alleviate endemic poverty and food insecurity. While they may relieve acute hunger, their long-term influence on health and well-being is poorly understood. Methods: An exploratory cross-sectional telephone survey assessed both adequacy and quality of food aid provided via food pantries in the Leket Israel food bank network, in relation to recipients' dietary needs and health. The quality of food baskets and recipient diets were given a Healthy Portions Score (HPS) to measure compliance with Government guidelines for a "Basic Healthy Food Basket," and a Nutrient Density Score (NDS) to capture how well the food achieved the recommended dietary allowance (RDA) for vital macro and micronutrients. A total of 105 pantry users were surveyed from 16 pantries around the country. Results: The basket HPS correlated positively and highly significantly with dietary quality (individual NDS) after adjusting for gender, marital status and country of birth (standardized β = 0.22, p = 0.03). Nearly half (46%) reported food insecurity with hunger. Two thirds were overweight or obese, and anemia, cardiovascular and metabolic disease were prevalent. The average food basket provides 30% of energy, 55% of protein, 50% of fiber, but only 33% or less of the household requirement for most minerals and vitamins. Only 60% of participants met their estimated energy requirements, and the intake of many essential micronutrients was well below the RDA. Fruits and vegetable portions contributed by Leket Israel correlated positively with the dietary quality (individual NDS) after adjustment for the same covariates (Standardized β = 0.20, p = 0.04). Discussion: A structured telephone survey proved a feasible method to study the impact of food-aid quality on the nutrition and health of food pantry users in an affluent country. Food baskets with fruits, vegetables and higher quality nutrition were correlated with healthier diets among the recipients. Data correlating food-aid quality and recipient diet and health is essential to effective policy making.
In this thesis I explore how the elements of tax systems affect individuals' behavior. The goal is to enhance our understanding of how tax responses are affected by search and adjustment costs, information frictions, hassle costs and behavioral biases in general.In the first chapter, I provide theoretical and empirical evidence on the importance of statutory incidence in labor markets in presence of asymmetric frictions. Using a theoretical model I show that labor supply responses are stronger when the statutory incidence of taxes or labor rules falls on firms. The asymmetry of response stems from the assumption that firms have a greater ability to respond to incentives than workers because it is easier for firms to change working hours. The result holds even if wages adjust to equalize differences in labor costs stemming from taxes and regulations. I explore these mechanisms by studying labor responses to incentives generated by the "Mini-Job" program aimed at increasing labor supply of low-income individuals in Germany. Using administrative data, I show evidence of a strong behavioral response – in the form of sharp bunching – to the mini-job threshold that generates large discontinuous changes both in the marginal tax rates and in the total income and payroll tax liability of individuals in Germany. Sharp bunching translates into elasticity estimates that are an order of magnitude larger than has been previously estimated using the bunching approach. To explain the magnitude of the observed response, I show that in addition to tax rates, fringe benefit payments also change at the threshold. Using a large survey of businesses and a household survey, I compare wages and fringe benefits around the mini-job threshold and find that mini-job workers are paid higher gross wages but receive smaller yearly bonuses and fewer vacation days than regular workers. These results indicate that lower fringe benefits make mini-jobs attractive to employers, thus facilitating labor supply responses in accordance with the model's predictions.In the second chapter, I study behavioral responses to changes in marginal tax rates of social security and income taxes. I find that responses depend on individual's employment status: whether a worker is a wage earner, self-employed, or a proprietor. In line with the existing literature I document weak (but statistically significant) bunching at kink points of the tax schedule among wage earners. Starting from 1999, wage earners accumulate pension credits when they exceed a certain threshold, however, no contributions are due until earnings reach a second, higher threshold. Even 10 years after this reform I find no bunching to the right of the eligibility threshold, suggesting that individuals do not assign a high value to pension benefits. Lack of bunching is persistent across age groups and unlikely to be explained by friction costs as individuals are able to bunch at other kink points. I find strong responses to tax incentives among the self-employed but the responses differ by the type of kink. I find sharp bunching at the first kink, medium bunching at the top kink and weak bunching at the middle kink. Comparing responses before and after a tax reform that changed the magnitude of kinks I find that self-employed individuals aggressively reduce earnings to bunch at the lower, more salient kink points.In the third chapter, I study information reporting, which has been argued to be an effective tool against evasion. However, even the simplest reporting requirements can prove to be costly to taxpayers. The trade-off between evasion and compliance costs suggests that reporting rules should only be imposed on a subset of the population. In this paper I address the question of how to optimally determine such reporting thresholds. In the first part of the paper I use a natural experiment to document that reporting rules are indeed costly to taxpayers but are successful at reducing evasion. I study a reform that simplified reporting rules for an income tax deduction of noncash charitable contributions in the U.S. Relying on a revealed preference approach, I find that relaxing reporting requirements led to a steady increase in reported donations but that nearly 50% of these new donations were untruthful. The tax revenue loss, however, was offset by substantial savings for taxpayers because reporting requirements impose substantial hassle costs: $90 on average per person. In the second part of the paper I develop a framework which allows me to characterize optimal reporting thresholds. I show that the determination of optimal thresholds should take into account the utility loss from reporting experienced by individuals and a loss in externality benefits from charitable giving against the tax revenue loss generated by evasion. The size of a reporting threshold is primarily governed by the type and magnitude of cheating. Calibrations of the model shows that in the case of noncash charitable donation deductions, the optimal threshold is more than twice lower than the threshold chosen by the government.
В предлагаемом Вашему вниманию страновом обзоре рассматриваются тенденции и причины развития неравенства в Австралии за последние несколько десятилетий. Несмотря на то, что по сравнению с другими странами Австралия достигла значительных успехов в помощи наиболее нуждающимся слоям населения, в стране отмечен рост неравенства. Анализируются факторы, оказывающие влияние на развитие неравенства. К этим факторам относятся как внешние аспекты: мировой финансовый кризис, интеграция экономики Австралии в мировую экономическую систему, так и внутренние особенности экономического развития страны, а именно: демографическая ситуация, изменения на рынке труда, государственная политика по сокращению неравенства. Автор показывает, что старение населения, изменения на рынке труда, при которых растет спрос на квалифицированную рабочую силу, недостаточно эффективная налоговая политика и система пенсионных отчислений негативно влияют на справедливое распределение доходов. Так, выявлено размывание среднего класса, так как от налоговых льгот и пенсионных отчислений наибольшие преимущества получают наиболее и наименее обеспеченные группы населения. При этом внутренние факторы оказывают большее влияние на развитие неравенства по сравнению с внешними. Для проведения анализа использовались данные обследований Австралийского Бюро статистики: Обследования расходов домохозяйств и Обследования доходов и жилищных условий. Проведенный анализ демонстрирует, что, несмотря на предпринимаемые правительством меры по преодолению неравенства на протяжении последних трех десятилетий и, в частности, первого десятилетия 21-го века доминировали факторы, усиливающие неравенство доходов, вследствие чего в Австралии по сравнению с другими странами ОЭСР наблюдается наиболее высокое неравенство доходов. ; The presented country report surveys the trends in inequality in Australia over the past several decades and discusses the complex interaction of factors behind these trends. By international standards, Australia has been considerably more successful than many countries in directing assistance to the most needy. However, inequality in the country is increasing. The author analyses the factors that influence inequality. These factors include external aspects: the global financial crisis, the stimulus to the Australian economy from increasing global integration, and national features of economic development: demographic situation, changes in the labour market, government policies to reduce inequality. The author demonstrates that aging population, changes in the labour market with the increasing demand for high-skilled, high ability workers and insufficiently effective tax and pension policies negatively affect income distribution. The middle class shrank as high-income individuals and people on low income benefited from the tax and pension policies. The internal factors have more influence on inequality development compared to the external. Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (Household Expenditure Survey and Survey of Income and Housing) were used for the analysis. The conducted analysis demonstrates that, despite the government efforts, over the past three decades, and particularly through the first decade of the 21st century, it has been the forces increasing inequality that have dominated, leaving Australia on the broad measure of household disposable income inequality at the higher end of OECD countries.
The module was administered as a post-election interview. The resulting data are provided along with voting, demographic, district and macro variables in a single dataset. CSES Variable List The list of variables is being provided on the CSES Website to help in understanding what content is available from CSES, and to compare the content available in each module. Themes: MICRO-LEVEL DATA: Identification and study administration variables: weighting factors; election type; date of election 1st and 2nd round; study timing (post-election study, pre-election and post-election study, between rounds of majoritarian election); mode of interview; gender of interviewer; date questionnaire administered; primary electoral district of respondent; number of days the interview was conducted after the election; language of questionnaire. Demography: year and month of birth; gender; education; marital status; union membership; union membership of others in household; business association membership, farmers´ association membership; professional association membership; current employment status; main occupation; socio economic status; employment type - public or private; industrial sector; current employment status, occupation, socio economic status, employment type - public or private, and industrial sector of spouse; household income; number of persons in household; number of children in household under the age of 18; number of children in household under the age of 6; attendance at religious services; religiosity; religious denomination; language usually spoken at home; region of residence; race; ethnicity; rural or urban residence; primary electoral district; country of birth; year arrived in current country. Survey variables: perception of public expenditure on health, education, unemployment benefits, defense, old-age pensions, business and industry, police and law enforcement, welfare benefits; perception of improving individual standard of living, state of economy, government's action on income inequality; respondent cast a ballot at the current and the previous election; vote choice (presidential, lower house and upper house elections) at the current and the previous election; respondent cast candidate preference vote at the current and the previous election; difference who is in power and who people vote for; sympathy scale for selected parties and political leaders; assessment of parties on the left-right-scale and/or an alternative scale; self-assessment on a left-right-scale and an optional scale; satisfaction with democracy; party identification; intensity of party identification, institutional and personal contact in the electoral campaigning, in person, by mail, phone, text message, email or social networks, institutional contact by whom; political information questions; expected development of household income in the next twelve month; ownership of residence, business or property or farm or livestock, stocks or bonds, savings; likelihood to find another job within the next twelve month; spouse likelihood to find another job within the next twelve month. DISTRICT-LEVEL DATA: number of seats contested in electoral district; number of candidates; number of party lists; percent vote of different parties; official voter turnout in electoral district. MACRO-LEVEL DATA: election outcomes by parties in current (lower house/upper house) legislative election; percent of seats in lower house received by parties in current lower house/upper house election; percent of seats in upper house received by parties in current lower house/upper house election; percent of votes received by presidential candidate of parties in current elections; electoral turnout; party of the president and the prime minister before and after the election; number of portfolios held by each party in cabinet, prior to and after the most recent election; size of the cabinet after the most recent election; number of parties participating in election; ideological families of parties; left-right position of parties assigned by experts and alternative dimensions; most salient factors in the election; fairness of the election; formal complaints against national level results; election irregularities reported; scheduled and held date of election; irregularities of election date; extent of election violence and post-election violence; geographic concentration of violence; post-election protest; electoral alliances permitted during the election campaign; existing electoral alliances; requirements for joint party lists; possibility of apparentement and types of apparentement agreements; multi-party endorsements on ballot; votes cast; voting procedure; voting rounds; party lists close, open, or flexible; transferable votes; cumulated votes if more than one can be cast; compulsory voting; party threshold; unit for the threshold; freedom house rating; democracy-autocracy polity IV rating; age of the current regime; regime: type of executive; number of months since last lower house and last presidential election; electoral formula for presidential elections; electoral formula in all electoral tiers (majoritarian, proportional or mixed); for lower and upper houses was coded: number of electoral segments; linked electoral segments; dependent formulae in mixed systems; subtypes of mixed electoral systems; district magnitude (number of members elected from each district); number of secondary and tertiary electoral districts; fused vote; size of the lower house; GDP growth (annual percent); GDP per capita; inflation, GDP Deflator (annual percent); Human development index; total population; total unemployment; TI corruption perception index; international migrant stock and net migration rate; general government final consumption expenditure; public spending on education; health expenditure; military expenditure; central government debt; Gini index; internet users per 100 inhabitants; mobile phone subscriptions per 100 inhabitants; fixed telephone lines per 100 inhabitants; daily newspapers; constitutional federal structure; number of legislative chambers; electoral results data available; effective number of electoral and parliamentary parties.
"Commercial transaction surveys and test market data are important sources for the analysis of consumer behaviour in various markets. The advantage of these surveys is that they do not only rely on "weak" data of consumers but also on "measured" data (eg. sales information, marketing information etc.) The key questions for the analysis of commercial transaction surveys and test market data are the prospective evaluation of market success for launched or relaunched products and services, the influence of marketing and media on product purchases under "real market conditions" and comparison between the test market and the total market. These data are not yet used by the scientific community. There are three major challenges to get access to the data. The owners of the data (market research institutes/"clients") have to allow data access. The data must be anonymized in various ways (individuals/households, brands/products) without losing relevant information. Furthermore it is necessary to develop quality guidelines for commercial transaction surveys and test market data. In order to setup the process the RATSWD should initiate a project of official statistics, scientific community and commercial market research."(author's abstract)
Oil palm has become one of the most rapidly expanding crops throughout the humid tropics. Over the last two decades, the area under oil palm has almost tripled and its production more than quadrupled. This development is mainly attributed to the rising demand for vegetable oils and biofuels, favorable government policies in producer countries, as well as oil palm´s superior production potential and profitability compared to alternative land uses. Over 85% of the world´s palm oil production originates from Indonesia and Malaysia, which offer favorable agro-ecological growing conditions with relative abundance of cultivable land and agricultural labor. While the early expansion of oil palm was mainly driven by large scale private sector plantations, the more recent expansion of oil palm is largely driven by smallholder farmers. The first oil palm smallholders participated in government-supported out-grower schemes. Whereas such schemes still exist, most of the oil palm growth among smallholders is now due to independent adoption. At present, smallholders account for 41% of the total oil palm area and for 36% of the total fresh fruit bunch (FFB) production in Indonesia. If current trends continue, smallholders are expected to dominate the Indonesian palm oil sector in the near future. Potentially, oil palm can act as an instrument to include the rural poor into the modern agricultural sector, foster rural socio-economic development and contribute to the reduction of poverty and malnutrition. Its agronomic properties and high yield potential might help to secure an environmentally sustainable supply of vegetable oils and biofuels to growing global markets. However, oil palm expansion also entails socio-economic and environmental threats. Socio-economic threats include an increasing vulnerability and economic marginalization of the rural population, unequally distributed economic benefits among adopters, as well as negative impacts on food availability and food security. The ecological drawbacks related to oil palm expansion are deforestation, biodiversity loss, greenhouse gas emissions, and environmental degradation. Moreover, smallholders face a set of agronomic and institutional constraints that hinder them to achieve the crop´s full production potential. In order to design policies that enhance the environmental and economic sustainability of the diffusion of oil palm within smallholder agriculture, it is of paramount importance to i) understand the factors that influence smallholder land use decisions in general, and their decision to adopt oil palm in particular; ii) disentangle the welfare and nutritional implications that are associated with oil palm related land use changes; and iii) minimize the agronomic limitations and foster smallholder yields in existing oil palm production systems. However, the empirical evidence related to the diffusion of palm plantations into smallholder agriculture, its socio-economic implications as well as limitations in smallholder management practices is scarce. The present study addresses this gap in the literature by analyzing farm-household survey data from Jambi Province, Sumatra with regard to the above mentioned objectives. In particular, we set up a duration model to analyze the process of oil palm adoption and adoption determinants in a smallholder context. Using econometric models and a set of quantile regressions, we further quantify the implications of oil palm cultivation on smallholder livelihoods, with a focus on household consumption expenditure, calorie consumption and dietary quality. Based on crop modelling and plot level input-output data, we quantify smallholder yield gaps relative to simulated potential and exploitable yields and identify the major agronomic and institutional constraints in smallholder oil palm production. Our results highlight the fact the speed of adoption is significantly enhanced in villages that have contractual ties to private sector palm oil companies. Even though not all oil palm growers are included in such contracts, the existence of a contract in a village ensures access to processing facilities, which is a crucial factor in oil palm cultivation since FFB have to be milled within 48 hours after harvest. Thus, oil palm adoption potentially follows a regional path-dependency with regions where the oil palm industry was developed early on also being those regions where independent oil palm adoption now occurs most widely. This path-dependency has a potential downside, as it may foster regional disparities. However, there is also a positive side, because land use change becomes more predictable and easier to control for public policymakers. The environmental sustainability of future oil palm expansion therefore depends on the government's ability to demark land for plantation development that is already degraded, so to spare primary forest areas from direct encroachment. Analysing the welfare implications of oil palm cultivation shows that oil palm is a financially lucrative land use option for smallholder farmers. Results suggest that its cultivation is associated with increases in household consumption expenditure, calorie consumption and dietary quality. The observed effects can mainly be attributed to farm size expansions and increases in off-farm income opportunities that are achieved with the adoption of oil palm and the labor-saving management of the crop. Consequently, the net livelihood outcomes of oil palm adoption are likely to depend on smallholder household attributes which define their ability to expand their farms and diversify their off-farm incomes. Our results support this notion, showing that oil palm adoption has heterogeneous effects especially with respect to non-food expenditures. Thus, diffusion of oil palm among smallholder farmers may worsen social inequality. From a rural development perspective, oil palm expansion might ultimately become a race for land, which might become a speculative object and a scare resource. Especially more traditional land use practices, such as slash and burn farming or rubber agro-forests, might gradually be replaced with the diffusion of oil palm plantations into smallholder agriculture. Especially in regions that are still dominated by extensive land use practices, the land rent of agriculture relative to extensive agriculture (e.g., rubber agroforests) and forests could be increased, enhancing the encroachment of forests. Assessing the agronomic performance of oil palm adopters, we find smallholder yields to show large variations and to be generally far below plantation sector standards. In particular, existing oil palm smallholdings offer a tremendous potential for future yield increases, as they obtain only 56% of the cumulative exploitable yields over a 20 year plantation life cycle. The most important determinants of yield gaps are management practices such as fertilizer dosage and length of harvesting intervals. Furthermore, smallholders (formerly) operating under contract arrangements with private or government companies achieve higher yields compared to independent smallholders. Yield increases in oil palm production can help to improve the livelihoods of small scale farmers and may also reduce the conversion of forest and peat lands into oil palm plantations. Reconciling food security and rural development with the sustainable use of the global environmental resource base has widely been identified as one of the major challenges of present times. If implemented well, smallholder oil palm cultivation offers the necessary features to minimize the inherent economic-ecological tradeoff of agricultural production.
Longitudinal social surveys are widely used to understand which factors enable or constrain access to higher education. One such data resource is the Next Steps survey comprising an initial sample of 16,122 pupils aged 13-14 attending English state and private schools in 2004, with follow up annually to age 19-20 and a further survey at age 25. The Next Steps data is a potentially rich resource for studying inequalities of access to higher education. It contains a wealth of information about pupils' social background characteristics - including household income, parental education, parental social class, housing tenure and family composition - as well as longitudinal data on aspirations, choices and outcomes in relation to education. However, as with many longitudinal social surveys, Next Steps suffers from a substantial amount of missing data due to item non-response and sample attrition which may seriously compromise the reliability of research findings. Helpfully, Next Steps data has been linked with more robust administrative data from the National Pupil Database (NPD), which contains a more limited range of social background variables, but has comparatively little in the way of missing data due to item non-response or attrition. We analyse these linked datasets to assess the implications of missing data for the reliability of Next Steps. We show that item non-response in Next Steps biases the apparent socioeconomic composition of the Next Steps sample upwards, and that this bias is exacerbated by sample attrition since Next Steps participants from less advantaged social backgrounds are more likely to drop out of the study. Moreover, by the time it is possible to measure access to higher education, the socioeconomic background variables in Next Steps are shown to have very little explanatory power after controlling for the social background and educational attainment variables contained in the NPD. Given these findings, we argue that longitudinal social surveys with much missing data are only reliable sources of data on access to higher education if they can be linked effectively with more robust administrative data sources. This then raises the question - why not just use the more robust datasets?
A central question for policy makers concerned with helping the poor through a macro crisis is how to target scarcer resources at a time of greater need. Technical arguments suggest that finer targeting through tightening individual programs or reallocation resources towards more tightly targeted programs uses resources more efficiently for poverty reduction. These arguments survive even when the greater informational costs and the incentive effects of finer targeting are taken into account. But political economy arguments suggest that finer targeting will end up with fewer resources allocated to that program, and that looser targeting, because it knits together the interests of the poor and the near poor, may generate greater resources and hence be more effective for poverty reduction despite being 'leakier.' Overall the policy advice to tighten targeting and to avoid more loosely targeted programs during crises needs to be given with consideration caution. However, the advice to design transfer systems with greater flexibility, in the technical and the political economy senses, is strengthened by the arguments presented here. The case for external assistance to design flexible transfer systems ex ante and to relieve the painful tradeoffs in targeting during a crisis is also shown to be strong.
