Migration and non farm activities as income diversification strategies: the case of Northern Ghana

Francesca Marchetta

Working Papers - Economics from Universita' degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Scienze per l'Economia e l'Impresa

Abstract: Environmental changes affect the livelihood of the rural population. This is especially true for those households who mainly rely on farming for their subsistence. In Northern Ghana, during the last two decades, soil erosion, the increasing unpredictability of the rains and the raise in the population size - with the ensuing pressure on the land - contributed to make people even more vulnerable to environmental conditions. These factors - together with the adverse market conditions for the local produce and the neglect of the region in the design of adjustment policies - pushed rural population towards income generating activities alternative to farming (i.e. migration and non farm activities). In this paper, we use a multivariate analysis to explore the determinants of income diversification from a household perspective. We find that non agricultural activities represent an option that better-off households - and communities - can resort to, in order to overcome the difficulties of the agricultural sector; while out-rural seasonal migration is emerging as a coping strategy adopted by poor households to meet their basic needs, and it is unlikely to improve their socioeconomic condition in the long run.

Keywords: income diversification; poverty; inequality; migration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I32 O15 O55 Q12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 40 pages
Date: 2008
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-dev and nep-mig
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.disei.unifi.it/upload/sub/pubblicazioni/repec/pdf/wp16_2008.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Migration and nonfarm activities as income diversification strategies: the case of Northern Ghana (2013)
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:frz:wpaper:wp2008_16.rdf

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers - Economics from Universita' degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Scienze per l'Economia e l'Impresa Via delle Pandette 9 50127 - Firenze - Italy. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Giorgio Ricchiuti ().