Long-term Effects of Early Life Maize Yield on Maize Productivity and Efficiency in Rural Malawi

Mussa, Richard (2017): Long-term Effects of Early Life Maize Yield on Maize Productivity and Efficiency in Rural Malawi.

Abstract

The paper assesses the effects of maize yields just prior to birth (in utero), in the first and the second years of life on adult life productivity and efficiency of maize farmers born between 1984 and 1995 in rural Malawi. To ensure that early life maize yields are not confounded by omitted local chacteristics, they are transformed into relative maize yields by using a cumulative gamma distribution. I find that maize yield just prior to birth significantly increases maize output in a farmer's adult life. However, relative maize yields in the first and second years of life have no long-term effects on maize production. Furthermore, there is no long-term impact of early life maize yields on the technical efficiency of maize production. These findings survive a number of robustness checks including alternative definitions of early life maize yields, controlling for migration and allowing for serial correlation. Furthermore, the results are not driven by sample selection originating from survival induced by maize yields in early life. Thus, low maize productivity in early-life begets low maize productivity in adult life. The paper finds that the impact of inputs under the farm input subsidy programme (FISP) on maize productivity is almost of the same order of magnitude as the long-term impact of maize yield in utero.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Productivity; In utero; Malawi
• Subjects: Q - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics ; Environmental and Ecological Economics > Q1 - Agriculture > Q12 - Micro Analysis of Farm Firms, Farm Households, and Farm Input Markets

References

Almond D, Currie J. 2011. Killing Me Softly: The Fetal Origins Hypothesis. Journal of Economic Perspectives 25: 153-172.

Asadullahah, M. N. and Rahman, S. 2009. Farm productivity and efficiency in rural Bangladesh: the role of education revisited, Applied Economics, 41, pp. 17-33.

Asselin, L.M. 2002. Multidimensional poverty: Composite indicator of multidimensional poverty. Levis, Quebec: Institut de Mathematique Gauss.

Blasius J, Greenacre M. 2006. Correspondence analysis and related methods in practice. In M.Greenacre, and J. Blasius (Eds.), Multiple correspondence analysis and related methods (pp. 3-40). London: Chapman and Hall.

Barker, DJP. 1992. Fetal and Infant Origins of Adult Disease. British Medical Journal 301: 1111.

Battese, G. E. and Coelli, T. J. 1988. Prediction of firm-level technical efficiencies with a generalized frontier production function and panel data, Journal of Econometrics, 38: 387-399.

Bleakley H. 2010. Malaria Eradication in the Americas: A Retrospective Analysis of Childhood Exposure. American Economic Journal of Applied Economics 2:1-45.

Burke, M., Gong, E., and Jones, K. 2014. Income shocks and HIV in africa. The Economic Journal, 125, 1157-1189.

Chirwa, E. and Dorward, A. 2013. Agricultural Input Subsidies: The Recent Malawi Experience, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Coelli, T. J. (1995) Estimators and hypothesis tests for a stochastic frontier function: A Monte Carlo analysis, Journal of Productivity Analysis, 6, pp. 247-268.

Coelli, T. J. and Battese, G. E. 1996. Identification of Factors which Influence the Technical Inefficiency of Indian Farmers, Australian Journal of Agricultural Economics, 40, pp. 103-128.

Currie, J. and Vogl, T. 2013. Early-Life Health and Adult Circumstance in Developing Countries, Annual Review of Economics, 5:1-36.

Deininger, K. and Jin, S. 2006. Tenure security and land related investment: evidence from Ethiopia, European Economic Review, 50, pp. 1245-1277.

Dercon, S. and Hoddinott, J. 2003. Health, shocks and poverty persistence, WIDER Discussion Papers, World Institute for Development Economics (UNUWIDER), No. 2003/08

Dercon, S., and C. Porter. 2014. Live Aid revisited: Long-term impacts of the 1984 Ethiopian famine on children. Journal of the European Economic Association 12: 927-948.

Dinar, A., Karagiannis, and Tzouvelekas, G. V. 2007. Evaluating the impact of agricultural extension on farms performance in Crete: a nonneutral stochastic frontier approach, Agricultural Economics, 36, pp.133-144.

Ecker O., and Qaim, M. 2011. Analyzing Nutritional Impacts of Policies: An Empirical Study for Malawi, World Development, 39, pp. 412-428.

Flatø, M., Muttarak , R., and Pelser, A. 2016. Women, Weather, and Woes: The Triangular Dynamics of Female-Headed Households, Economic Vulnerability, and Climate Variability in South Africa, World Development, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2016.08.015.

Ferreira, F. and Schady, N. 2009. Aggregate economic shocks, child schooling, and child health. World Bank Research Observer, 24:147-181.

Fiszbein, A, Schady ,N., Ferreira F., Grosh, M., Keleher, N., Olinto, P., and Skoufias, E. 2009. Conditional Cash Transfers : Reducing Present and Future Poverty, World Bank Publications, The World Bank, number 2597.

Gørgens, T. Xin M, Vaithianathan R. 2012. Stunting and selection effects of famine: A case study of the Great Chinese Famine. Journal of Development Economics 97:99-111.

Grimard, F. and S. Laszlo. 2014. Long-Term Effects of Civil Conflict on Women's Health Outcomes in Peru. World Development, 54: 139-155.

Hoynes, H., DW.,Schanzenbach and Almond D. 2016. Long-Run Impacts of Childhood Access to the Safety Net. American Economic Review, 106: 903-934.

Huang, C. J. and J. T. Liu. 1994. Estimation of a Non-Neutral Stochastic Frontier Production Function, Journal of Productivity Analysis, 5, pp. 171-180.

Islam, A. and Maitra P. 2012. Health shocks and consumption smoothing in rural households: Does microcredit have a role to play? Journal of Development Economics 97: 232-243.

Jayachandran, S. 2006. Selling labor low: wage responses to productivity shocks in developing countries. Journal of Political Economy, 114: 538-575.

Kelly E. 2011. The Scourge of Asian Flu In utero Exposure to Pandemic Influenza and the Development of a Cohort of British Children. Journal of Human Resources 46:669-694.

Kennedy, DO. 2016. B Vitamins and the Brain: Mechanisms, Dose and Efficacy-A Review. Nutrients, 8, 68. http://doi.org/10.3390/nu8020068.

Lin MJ, Liu E. 2014. Does In utero Exposure to Illness Matter? The 1918 Influenza Epidemic in Taiwan as a Natural Experiment. Journal of Health Economics, 37: 152-163.

Liu, Y, and Myers, R. 2009. Model selection in stochastic frontier analysis with an application to maize production in Kenya, Journal of Productivity Analysis, 31, pp. 33-46.

Maccini S, Yang D. 2009. Under the Weather: Health, Schooling, and Economic Consequences of Early-Life Rainfall. American Economic Review 99:1006-1026.

Mansour H, Rees DI. 2012. Armed conflict and birthweight: Evidence from the al-Aqsa Intifada. Journal of Development Economics 99:190-199.

Mussa, R. 2015. Do the Poor Pay More for Maize in Malawi?, Journal of International Development, 27:546-563.

NSO (National Statistics Office). 2012. Integrated Household Survey 2010-2011. Report, National Statistics Office, Zomba, Malawi.

Ricker-Gilbert J, Jayne TS, Chirwa E. 2011. Subsidies and Crowding Out: A Double-Hurdle Model of Fertilizer Demand in Malawi. American Journal of Agricultural Economics 93: 26-42.

Ricker-Gilbert J, Mason NM, Jayne TS, Darko F, Tembo S. 2013. What are the Effects of Input Subsidies on Maize Prices? Evidence from Malawi and Zambia. Agricultural Economics 44: 671-686.

Smale M. 1995. Maize is life: Malawi's delayed green revolution. World Development, 23: 819-831.

Strauss J, Thomas D. 1998. Health, Nutrition, and Economic Development. Journal of Economic Literature 36: 766-817.

Tiwari, S., Jacoby, H.G. and Skoufias, E. 2017. Monsoon babies: rainfall shocks and child nutrition in Nepal. Economic Development and Cultural Change 65: 167-188.

Udry, C. 1996. Gender, Agricultural Production and the Theory of the Household, Journal of Political Economy, 104, pp. 1010-1046.

Waldron, I. 1983.Sex differences in human mortality: the role of genetic factors, Social Science and Medicine, 17, 321-333.

Weir, S. and Knight, J. 2007. Production externalities of education: evidence from rural Ethiopia, Journal of African Economies, 16, pp. 134-65.

World Bank. 2013. Malawi Public Expenditure Review, Report No. 79865-MW.