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Journal of Integrative Agriculture  2024, Vol. 23 Issue (2): 359-373    DOI: 10.1016/j.jia.2023.11.016
Section 1: Nutrition Advanced Online Publication | Current Issue | Archive | Adv Search |
Off-farm employment, agriculture production activities, and household dietary diversity in environmentally and economically vulnerable areas of Asia

Yunli Bai1, 2#, Xuanye Zeng1, 2, 3, Chao Fu1, 2, Linxiu Zhang1, 2, 3

1 Key Laboratory of Ecosystem Network Observation and Modeling, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China

2 United Nations Environment Programme–International Ecosystem Management Partnership (UNEP-IEMP), Beijing 100101, China

3 University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China

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摘要  

消除饥饿和营养不良是可持续发展目标“零饥饿”的两个子目标。非农就业被认为是消除饥饿和一切形式营养不良的重要途径之一。本研究旨在通过研究非农就业与农业生产活动(包括种植作物的多样性、养殖活动)的替代效应、互补效应及收入效应,探讨非农就业在改善饮食多样性方面的作用。本文利用2019年在中国、尼泊尔、柬埔寨、泰国和缅甸环境-经济双重脆弱的12个地区1282个家庭的一手调研数据,采用Poisson/Tobit/Probit/OLS回归和工具变量法进行分析。结果显示,非农就业能显著提高家庭饮食多样性以及富含蛋白质和微量元素的肉类、鱼和其他水产品、水果、奶和奶制品的消费。机制分析结果表明,非农就业通过提高作物多样性(特别是最低1/3收入家庭)、提高中等1/3收入家庭饲养畜禽的概率以及增加家庭收入来促进家庭饮食多样性。非农就业对家庭饮食多样性的影响,在最低1/3收入家庭、文盲比例低的家庭和位于中高收入国家的家庭间更大。这些发现意味着,在环境和经济脆弱区,非农就业在实现减贫、减少营养不良和保护农业生物多样性多重效益方面发挥着至关重要的作用。然而,非农就业可能会扩大低人力资本家庭与高人力资本家庭、位于中低收入国家家庭与位于中高收入国家家庭之间饮食多样性的差距。



Abstract  

Access to off-farm employment has been expected to be a critical approach to ending hunger and all forms of malnutrition, two important targets of achieving Zero Hunger.  This study aims to investigate the role of off-farm employment in improving dietary diversity through substitution effect and complementary effect with agricultural production activities and income effect.  This study adopts Poisson/Tobit/Probit/OLS regressions and the instrument variable method based on the primary survey data collected among 1,282 households at 12 sites in environmentally and economically vulnerable areas of China, Nepal, Cambodia, Thailand, and Myanmar in 2019.  The results show that off-farm employment is positively associated with household dietary diversity and the consumption of flesh meat, fish and other aquatic animals, fruits, and milk and dairy products, which are rich in protein and micronutrients.  The results of mechanism analysis show that off-farm employment contributes to household dietary diversity by improving crop diversity, especially for poor households, boosting the probability of livestock raising for households with the middle one-third disposal income, and increasing household income.  The positive association between off-farm employment and household dietary diversity is much higher for households with the bottom one-third disposal income, low illiteracy, and from upper-middle income countries.  These findings imply that off-farm employment does play a vital role in achieving multiple benefits of poverty alleviation, malnutrition reduction, and agrobiodiversity conservation in environmentally and economically vulnerable areas.  However, it may enlarge the gaps in dietary diversity between households with low human capital and from low and lower-middle income countries and those with high human captal and from middle-high countries.

Keywords:  off-farm employment        dietary diversity        income effect        substitution effect        complementary effec   
Received: 20 February 2023   Accepted: 10 August 2023
Fund: We acknowledge the financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (72373140 and 42061144004) and the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDA20010303). 
About author:  #Correspondence Yunli Bai, Tel: +86-10-64889833, E-mail: baiyl.11b@igsnrr.ac.cn

Cite this article: 

Yunli Bai, Xuanye Zeng, Chao Fu, Linxiu Zhang. 2024. Off-farm employment, agriculture production activities, and household dietary diversity in environmentally and economically vulnerable areas of Asia . Journal of Integrative Agriculture, 23(2): 359-373.

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