Impact of the West African Ebola Epidemic on Agricultural Production and Rural Welfare: Evidence from Liberia

Alejandro de la Fuente, Hanan Jacoby and Kotchikpa Gabriel Lawin

Journal of African Economies, 2020, vol. 29, issue 5, 454-474

Abstract: The 2014-15 Ebola epidemic took a devastating human and economic toll on three West African countries, of which Liberia was perhaps the hardest hit. The pathways through which the crisis affected economic activity in these largely agrarian societies remain poorly understood. To study these mechanisms in the context of rural Liberia, we link a geographically disaggregated indicator of Ebola disease mortality to nationally representative household survey data on agricultural production and consumption. We find that higher Ebola prevalence (as proxied by local mortality) led to greater disruption of group-labor mobilization for planting and harvest, thereby reducing rice area planted as well as rice yields. Household welfare, measured by per capita expenditures spanning two points before and after the crisis, fell by more in Ebola prevalent areas with more intensive rice-farming, precisely those areas more adversely affected by agricultural labor shortages.

Keywords: Ebola; Liberia; agriculture; welfare; epidemic (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jae/ejaa002 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Impact of the West African Ebola Epidemic on Agricultural Production and Rural Welfare: Evidence from Liberia (2019)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:jafrec:v:29:y:2020:i:5:p:454-474.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of African Economies is currently edited by Francis Teal

More articles in Journal of African Economies from Centre for the Study of African Economies Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().