The Impact of Agricultural Land and Labor Productivity on Poverty: The Case of Rice Farming Households in Cambodia

Thath, Rido (2016): The Impact of Agricultural Land and Labor Productivity on Poverty: The Case of Rice Farming Households in Cambodia.

Abstract

Using the data from the Cambodia Socio-Economic Survey (CSES) 2009, the study examined the impact of agricultural labor and land productivity on poverty among Cambodian rice farming households. The results showed that improving productivity of land and, especially, that of labor reduced poverty in two of Cambodia’s rice producing regions, the Tonle Sap and the Plain. There was no evidence of such impact in two other regions, the Mountain and the Cost. When the productivity of the less productive farming households were raised up to the mean level of productivity, only labor productivity was found to have an impact on poverty reduction in the Tonle Sap and the Plain, indicating that improving agricultural labor productivity is the key to poverty reduction. In Cambodia, improving rice productivity in the Tonle Sap and the Plain region is the most poverty reducing.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Land productivity, labor productivity, Cambodia, rice production, rural poverty
• Subjects: I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I3 - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty > I32 - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty; Q - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics ; Environmental and Ecological Economics > Q1 - Agriculture > Q12 - Micro Analysis of Farm Firms, Farm Households, and Farm Input Markets

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