Impact of climate change adaptation on welfare and child nutrition of farm households in rural Ethiopia: A panel data analysis

Abstract

This study evaluates the potential impact of adopting climate change adaptation practices on the welfare and child nutrition of farm households in Ethiopia. The study uses a balanced panel of household-level data from the Ethiopian Socioeconomic Survey of rural households conducted in 2013/2014 and again in 2015/2016. For household welfare, measures of real consumption expenditure per adult equivalent and a food shortage indicator are used. For child nutrition outcomes, weights for height and body mass index are considered. The potential selection bias introduced by including adoption decisions of climate change adaptation strategies and evaluating how these strategies impact household and child outcomes is addressed by applying a panel data multinomial endogenous switching regression model. The climate change adaptation practice sets considered are categorized as soil and water conservation (SW), crop rotation (CR), and improved inputs (IM), at times alone and also in various combinations. We present findings on what household characteristics make it more or less likely that households will adopt a particular adaptation practice set strategy. The results demonstrate that in many cases, adoption of climate change adaptation practices set is positively associated with improved household welfare and child nutrition outcomes. In addition we find that larger positive impacts are observed when farmers combine multiple complementary practice sets. Our findings imply that policies should encourage smallholder farmers to adopt multiple climate change adaptation practice sets to improve the status of households’ welfare and children’s nutrition.