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oai:mountainscholar.org:10217/2196372025-12-30T03:42:02Zcom_10217_100532com_10217_100000com_10217_100304com_10217_100303col_10217_182111col_10217_100317

Mulungu, Kelvin, author Manning, Dale, advisor Seidl, Andrew, advisor Costanigro, Marco, committee member Bellows, Laura, committee member 2021-01-11T11:21:12Z 2021-01-11T11:21:12Z 2020 Mulungu_colostate_0053A_16388.pdf https://hdl.handle.net/10217/219637 https://doi.org/10.25675/3.02602 Climate-related shocks, such as droughts and floods, can have particularly harmful effects for poor rural households in developing countries. In this dissertation, I determine how forests affect a household's ability to cope with shocks, estimate how agricultural input use changes after shocks, and explore a novel explanation for high rates of undernutrition within food-producing households. In the first essay, using data from Malawi, I find that households allocate labor away from agriculture to forests in the event of a weather shock and that access to forests offsets the negative effect of weather shocks on nutrition and food security. In the second essay, I use nationally representative data on smallholder households in Zambia and find that, after a weather shock, households are less likely to use a risky input and more likely to use a less risky input because they become more risk-averse. Access to credit can mitigate the negative impact of a shock on the likelihood of using fertilizer. In the last essay, I use household production and demographic data from a household survey that I conducted in Zambia to measure nutrition deficits created by insufficient food production or food sales that, if consumed at home, would have contributed to household nutrition. I find that nutrient deficits, from either insufficient production or selling output, are detrimental to nutrition and food security. High lean season food prices reduce the quantity of market-bought foods demanded and undermine the ability of households to use income from crop sales to purchase food. In summary, rural households respond to shocks in various ways. Both natural resource access and improved credit markets can offset the negative impacts from a shock while increasing food production and nutrition outcomes. born digital doctoral dissertations English eng Colorado State University. Libraries 2020- Copyright and other restrictions may apply. User is responsible for compliance with all applicable laws. For information about copyright law, please see https://libguides.colostate.edu/copyright. natural insurance risk aversion weather shocks nutrition forests technology adoption Three essays on weather shocks, nutrition and forests Text Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) Doctoral Agricultural and Resource Economics Colorado State University This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights (https://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/). You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). open.access