Publication: Man or Machine?: Environmental Consequences of Wage Driven Mechanization in Indian Agriculture
Loading...
Date
2023-03-28
ISSN
Published
2023-03-28
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
This paper uses an exogenous shock to wages from the world’s largest anti-poverty program to show that higher wages can lead to increased air pollution, likely by inducing farmers to shift into a labor-saving and mechanized production process. Using a difference-in-differences approach on the staggered roll-out of India’s Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA), combined with data on nearly 1 million fires, the paper shows that the frequency of agricultural fires increases by 21 percent after the shock. The increase in fires is concentrated in districts that appear more likely to mechanize the harvest. MNREGA did not lead to changes in area planted or tonnage produced in fire intensive crops. The estimates show that nationally, the shock increased the rate of particulate emissions from biomass burning by 30 to 50 percent. The results suggest that absent policies to correct for environmental externalities of mechanization at all stages of development, labor market shocks may lead to inefficient levels of mechanization.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Behrer, A. Patrick. 2023. Man or Machine?: Environmental Consequences of Wage Driven Mechanization in Indian Agriculture. Policy Researrch Working Papers; 10376. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/39606 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Building Resilience to Disaster and Climate Change through Social Protection(Washington, DC, 2013-05)Natural disasters and climate change are among the greatest threats to development. Although natural disasters have always presented risks, climate change increases those risks and compounds them by adding a greater level of uncertainty. As a result of their increased frequency, the economic and social costs of disasters are mounting (World Bank 2010). Natural disasters and climate change can push people into chronic and transient poverty and force them to adopt negative coping strategies. Social protection programs play an important role in protecting poor and vulnerable people from these impacts and helping them reduce their exposure and vulnerability to them. This toolkit provides guidance on how to prepare social protection programs to respond to disasters and climate change. The snapshots of good practice experiences and practical tips for implementation are intended to guide decision makers in countries facing these risks in adapting their social protection programs to reduce negative impacts and accelerate recovery. The focus of this toolkit is aligned with the role and expertise of the World Bank, which has traditionally supported early and long-term recovery and helped rebuild livelihoods and infrastructure. This toolkit provides examples of good practice experiences and practical guidance for the practitioner in that direction.Publication Republic of Senegal : Safety Net Assessment(Washington, DC, 2013-12-10)In 2010, the World Bank initiated a technical assistance program in social protection with the Government of Senegal, with a focus on safety nets. The World Bank and the government identified a number of technical notes and training sessions tailored to the immediate needs of the government. This Senegal safety net assessment integrates and summarizes the content of these technical notes. Poverty is a serious concern in the country, with the economy displaying significant vulnerabilities. While the government has been quick to respond to past crises, some of the measures taken by the government have had certain drawbacks. Also, factors such as poorly targeted support and rising prices have detracted from the efforts taken by the government. A well designed and implemented national safety net system is thus of utmost importance. This document examines the various factors involved in the creation and implementation of a well-designed safety net system for Senegal.Publication Transfers, Diversification and Household Risk Strategies : Experimental Evidence with Lessons for Climate Change Adaptation(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-04)While climate change is likely to increase weather risks in many developing countries, there is little evidence on effective policies to facilitate adaptation. This paper presents experimental evidence on a program in rural Nicaragua aimed at improving households' risk-management through income diversification. The intervention targeted agricultural households exposed to weather shocks related to changes in rainfall and temperature patterns. It combined a conditional cash transfer with vocational training or a productive investment grant. The authors identify the relative impact of each complementary package based on randomized assignment, and analyze how impacts vary by exposure to exogenous drought shocks. The results show that both complementary interventions provide full protection against drought shocks two years after the end of the intervention. Households that received the productive investment grant also had higher average consumption levels. The complementary interventions led to diversification of economic activities and better protection from shocks compared to beneficiaries of the basic conditional cash transfer and control households. These results show that combining safety nets with productive interventions can help households manage future weather risks and promote longer-term program impacts.Publication Sewing Success? Employment, Wages, and Poverty following the End of the Multi-Fibre Arrangement(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2012-03-14)The global textile and apparel sector is critically important as an early phase in industrialization for many developing countries and as a provider of employment opportunities to thousands of low-income workers, many of them women. The goal of this book is to explore how the lifting of the Multi-fibre Arrangement/ Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (MFA/ATC) quotas has affected nine countries Bangladesh, Cambodia, Honduras, India, Mexico, Morocco, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam with the broader aim of better understanding the links between globalization and poverty in the developing world. Analyzing how employment, wage premiums, and the structure of the apparel industry have changed after the MFA/ATC can generate important lessons for policy makers for economic development and poverty reduction. This book uses in-depth country case studies as the broad methodological approach. In-depth country studies are important because countries are idiosyncratic: differences in regulatory context, history, location, trade relationships, and policies shape both the apparel sector and how the apparel sector changed after the end of the MFA. In-depth country studies place broader empirical work in context and strengthen the conclusions. The countries in this book were chosen because they represent the diversity of global apparel production, including differences across regions, income levels, trade relationships, and policies. The countries occupy different places in the global value chain that now characterizes apparel production. Not surprisingly, the countries studied in this book represent the diversity of post-MFA experiences. This book highlights four key findings: The first is that employment and export patterns after the MFA/ATC did not necessarily match predictions. This book shows that only about a third of the variation in cross-country changes in exports is explained by wage differences. While wage differences explain some of the production shifts, domestic policies targeting the apparel sector, ownership type, and functional upgrading of the industry also played an important role. Second, changes in exports are usually, but not always, good indicators of what happens to wages and employment. While rising apparel exports correlated with rising wages and employment in the large Asian countries, rising exports coincided with falling employment in Sri Lanka. Third, this book identifies the specific ways that changes in the global apparel market affected worker earnings, thus helping to explain impacts on poverty. Fourth, in terms of policies, the countries that had larger increases in apparel exports were those that promoted apparel sector upgrading; those that did not promote upgrading had smaller increases or even falling exports.Publication Nepal's Investment Climate : Leveraging the Private Sector for Job Creation and Growth(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2012-03-19)The objective of the Nepal Investment Climate Assessment (ICA) is to evaluate the investment climate in Nepal in all its dimensions and promote policies to strengthen the private sector. The investment climate is made up of many dimensions that shape the opportunities for investments, employment creation, and growth of private firms. Such dimensions include factor markets, product markets, infrastructure services, and the macroeconomic, legal, regulatory, and institutional framework. The report's key finding is that while there are some niche sectors growing and expanding employment in Nepal (including tourism and certain educational and other services), there are many constraints to the investment climate in Nepal that are hindering the development and growth of the private sector. In particular, political instability, poor infrastructure, poor labor relations, poor access to finance, and declining exports plague Nepal's private sector. To overcome many of these issues and move forward, many reforms are needed. Given the extent of the challenge, effective public-private dialogue is required so that the government and the private sector can work in partnership to address these constraints. The pervasiveness and impact of political instability in Nepal makes the investment climate in the country comparable more to Afghanistan than other countries in the region or the comparator countries used in the analysis. While this comparison is unflattering, it is true. Political instability has stifled growth and limited Nepal's ability to exploit its hydropower and tourism potential. Interestingly, many firms do not perceive access to land and finance as major obstacles. This could be a reflection of lack of dynamism: Nepalese firms are simply not planning to invest, expand, and grow in their unstable and unpredictable environment. The peace dividend is not difficult to measure. As the surveys show, ending civil unrest alone would give back to enterprises 44 working days a year. The effects on economic activity, investment, growth, and job creation could be potentially huge.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Impact of Climate Change in Health in Colombia and Recommendations for Mitigation and Adaptation(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-10-18)Climate change has been called the most important threat to human health in the 21st century. It is estimated that if thetemperature rises and its impact on the other climatic variablescontinues unchanged, it will kill more than 83 million people (1 percent of the world’s population) in the next 80 years (Wattset al. 2020)—13 times the toll of the COVID-19 pandemic (WorldHealth Organization 2023). Historically, only pandemics or worldwars have posed such threats to human health. As a result,the issue has aroused unprecedented attention. In 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared climate changethe greatest health threat facing humanity (WHO 2021). Now, more than 195 governments have included climate change mitigation and adaptation as pillars in their multi-year plans, and government health sectors have been developing plans tomeasure and respond to the impact of climate change on health. However, recognition of the links between climate change and health remains nascent, so these efforts have not yet been accompanied by strategic and actionable approaches to measure the impacts and ground the responses. This report contributes to addressing that gap by providing a framework for understandingthe impact of climate change on human health in Colombia and by outlining the most effective actions to mitigate the threat.Publication Global Economic Prospects, January 2025(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-01-16)Global growth is expected to hold steady at 2.7 percent in 2025-26. However, the global economy appears to be settling at a low growth rate that will be insufficient to foster sustained economic development—with the possibility of further headwinds from heightened policy uncertainty and adverse trade policy shifts, geopolitical tensions, persistent inflation, and climate-related natural disasters. Against this backdrop, emerging market and developing economies are set to enter the second quarter of the twenty-first century with per capita incomes on a trajectory that implies substantially slower catch-up toward advanced-economy living standards than they previously experienced. Without course corrections, most low-income countries are unlikely to graduate to middle-income status by the middle of the century. Policy action at both global and national levels is needed to foster a more favorable external environment, enhance macroeconomic stability, reduce structural constraints, address the effects of climate change, and thus accelerate long-term growth and development.Publication Textbook Development in Low Income Countries : A Guide for Policy and Practice(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014)Since 2003, over 220 million books have been distributed in primary schools in global partnership for education (GPE) countries. Despite this, a few years ago, a World Bank study highlighted the fact that there simply aren't enough textbooks for most students in Africa, and what is available is too expensive. The main objective of the this course is to equip anyone in a position to advise, administer, or design a book provision project with the necessary knowledge in order to make the appropriate input and right decisions. The focus throughout is on how to get affordable books to school children when and where needed. It is designed to be a practical resource that covers the key issues encountered in textbook provision, ranging from authorship through national publishing infrastructure to pricing, and distribution. The course is organized in 12 modules under four sections: understanding the textbook industry; book acquisition strategies; distribution strategies; and policy and practice. It provides functional knowledge of the workings of the book industry and its role in supporting learning and education. This will include detailed study of the work that publishers, printers, and distributors do. It also focuses on how the book industry costs books and the methods and trade-offs governments have to make in financing textbooks and supplementary readers.Publication Women, Business and the Law 2023(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-02)“Women, Business and the Law 2023” is the ninth in a series of annual studies measuring the laws and regulations that affect women’s economic opportunity in 190 economies. The project presents eight indicators structured around women’s interactions with the law as they move through their lives and careers: Mobility, Workplace, Pay, Marriage, Parenthood, Entrepreneurship, Assets, and Pension. The 2023 edition identifies barriers to women’s economic participation and encourages reform of discriminatory laws. This year, the study also includes research, a literature review, and analysis of 53 years of reforms for women’s rights. Examining the economic decisions that women make throughout their working lives as well as tracking regulatory changes from 1970 to today, the study makes an important contribution to research and policy discussions about the state of women’s economic opportunities. By presenting powerful examples of change and highlighting the gaps still remaining, “Women, Business and the Law 2023” is a vital tool in ensuring economic empowerment for all. Data in “Women, Business and the Law 2023” are current as of October 1, 2022.Publication Reserve Management Survey Report 2023(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-10-27)This survey report represents a collaborative effort between Reserve Advisory and Management Partnership (RAMP) and central banks worldwide to advance the understanding and practice of reserve management. The cooperation of all central banks involved is greatly appreciated, and we anticipate that the findings obtained from this survey will make a valuable contribution to the ongoing success and resilience of central bank reserve management.