Off-farm employment, agriculture production activities, and household dietary diversity in environmentally and economically vulnerable areas of Asia
Yunli Bai, Xuanye Zeng, Chao Fu, Linxiu Zhang
Abstract
Access to off-farm employment has been expected to be one of important approaches to end hunger and all forms of malnutrition, which are 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. Using the primary survey data among 1282 households at 12 sites in environmentally and economically vulnerability areas of China, Nepal, Cambodia, Thailand, and Myanmar in 2019, Poisson/Tobit/Probit/OLS regressions and Instrument variable method are adopted. 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 microelement. The results of mechanism analysis show that off-farm employment contributes to household dietary diversity by improving crop diversity, especially for the poor household, boosting the probability of livestock breeding for the household with middle 1/3 income, and increasing household income. The positive association between off-farm employment and household dietary diversity are much higher for the households with the bottom 1/3 disposal income, low illiteracy, and in the middle-high 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 vulnerability areas. However, it may enlarge the gaps in dietary diversity between the households with low human capital and from low- middle countries and those with high human capital and from middle-high countries.