IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/asieco/v24y2013icp158-171.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Income shocks, coping strategies, and consumption smoothing: An application to Indonesian data

Author

Listed:
  • Berloffa, Gabriella
  • Modena, Francesca

Abstract

Using the Indonesian Family Life Survey, this study investigates whether Indonesian farmers respond differently to income shocks (crop loss) depending on the level of their asset ownership, and whether their responses are aimed at preserving consumption levels or at accumulating assets. We consider a framework in which assets contribute directly to the income generation process. In this context, the need to accumulate assets to ensure future income may lead poor farmers to behave quite differently in terms of both their responses to shocks and their consumption decisions. Our results suggest that while non-poor farmers smooth consumption relative to income, poor households use labor supply to compensate the income loss and, on average, they save half of this extra income. These results confirm the importance of savings for poor households, and highlight a crucial role for policies that support savings or, more precisely, the accumulation of productive assets.

Suggested Citation

  • Berloffa, Gabriella & Modena, Francesca, 2013. "Income shocks, coping strategies, and consumption smoothing: An application to Indonesian data," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(C), pages 158-171.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:asieco:v:24:y:2013:i:c:p:158-171
    DOI: 10.1016/j.asieco.2012.11.004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1049007812001108
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.asieco.2012.11.004?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Zeldes, Stephen P, 1989. "Consumption and Liquidity Constraints: An Empirical Investigation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(2), pages 305-346, April.
    2. Rosenzweig, Mark R & Wolpin, Kenneth I, 1993. "Credit Market Constraints, Consumption Smoothing, and the Accumulation of Durable Production Assets in Low-Income Countries: Investment in Bullocks in India," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 101(2), pages 223-244, April.
    3. Kathleen Beegle & Rajeev Dehejia & Roberta Gatti, 2003. "Child Labor, Crop Shocks, and Credit Constraints," NBER Working Papers 10088, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Hanan G. Jacoby & Emmanuel Skoufias, 1997. "Risk, Financial Markets, and Human Capital in a Developing Country," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 64(3), pages 311-335.
    5. Harold Alderman & Christina H. Paxson, 1994. "Do the Poor Insure? A Synthesis of the Literature on Risk and Consumption in Developing Countries," International Economic Association Series, in: Edmar L. Bacha (ed.), Economics in a Changing World, chapter 3, pages 48-78, Palgrave Macmillan.
    6. Rosenzweig, Mark R, 1988. "Risk, Implicit Contracts and the Family in Rural Areas of Low-income Countries," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 98(393), pages 1148-1170, December.
    7. Paxson, Christina H, 1992. "Using Weather Variability to Estimate the Response of Savings to Transitory Income in Thailand," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(1), pages 15-33, March.
    8. Zimmerman, Frederick J. & Carter, Michael R., 2003. "Asset smoothing, consumption smoothing and the reproduction of inequality under risk and subsistence constraints," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(2), pages 233-260, August.
    9. Stefan Dercon, 2002. "Income Risk, Coping Strategies, and Safety Nets," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 17(2), pages 141-166, September.
    10. Jonathan Morduch, 1995. "Income Smoothing and Consumption Smoothing," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 9(3), pages 103-114, Summer.
    11. Travis J. Lybbert & Christopher B. Barrett & Solomon Desta & D. Layne Coppock, 2004. "Stochastic wealth dynamics and risk management among a poor population," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 114(498), pages 750-777, October.
    12. Marjorie Flavin, 1985. "Excess Sensitivity of Consumption to Current Income: Liquidity Constraints or Myopia?," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 18(1), pages 117-136, February.
    13. Christopher B. Barrett & Michael R. Carter & Jean-Paul Chavas, 2018. "The Economics of Poverty Traps," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number barr-3.
    14. Otsuka, Keijiro & Suyanto, S. & Sonobe, Tetsushi & Tomich, Thomas P., 2001. "Evolution of land tenure institutions and development of agroforestry: evidence from customary land areas of Sumatra," Agricultural Economics, Blackwell, vol. 25(1), pages 85-101, June.
    15. Don Johnston & Jonathan Morduch, 2008. "The Unbanked: Evidence from Indonesia," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 22(3), pages 517-537, October.
    16. Paul Gertler & Jonathan Gruber, 2002. "Insuring Consumption Against Illness," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(1), pages 51-70, March.
    17. Pushkar Maitra, 2001. "Is consumption smooth at the cost of volatile leisure? An investigation of rural India," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 33(6), pages 727-734.
    18. Stein Kristiansen, 2003. "Linkages and Rural Non-Farm Employment Creation: Changing Challenges and Policies in Indonesia," Working Papers 03-22, Agricultural and Development Economics Division of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO - ESA).
    19. Udry, Christopher, 1995. "Risk and Saving in Northern Nigeria," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(5), pages 1287-1300, December.
    20. Kazianga, Harounan & Udry, Christopher, 2006. "Consumption smoothing? Livestock, insurance and drought in rural Burkina Faso," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(2), pages 413-446, April.
    21. Kochar, Anjini, 1995. "Explaining Household Vulnerability to Idiosyncratic Income Shocks," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(2), pages 159-164, May.
    22. Fafchamps, Marcel & Udry, Christopher & Czukas, Katherine, 1998. "Drought and saving in West Africa: are livestock a buffer stock?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(2), pages 273-305, April.
    23. David Newhouse, 2005. "The Persistence of Income Shocks: Evidence from Rural Indonesia," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 9(3), pages 415-433, August.
    24. Jalan, Jyotsna & Ravallion, Martin, 1999. "Are the poor less well insured? Evidence on vulnerability to income risk in rural China," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(1), pages 61-81, February.
    25. John Hoddinott, 2006. "Shocks and their consequences across and within households in Rural Zimbabwe," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(2), pages 301-321.
    26. Chris Manning, 2000. "Labour Market Adjustment to Indonesia's Economic Crisis: Context, Trends and Implications," Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(1), pages 105-136.
    27. Michael Carter & Christopher Barrett, 2006. "The economics of poverty traps and persistent poverty: An asset-based approach," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(2), pages 178-199.
    28. Lei Pan, 2009. "Risk Pooling through Transfers in Rural Ethiopia," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 57(4), pages 809-835, July.
    29. Benjamin, Dwayne, 1992. "Household Composition, Labor Markets, and Labor Demand: Testing for Separation in Agricultural Household Models," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 60(2), pages 287-322, March.
    30. Santos, Paulo & Barrett, Christopher B., 2006. "Informal Insurance in the Presence of Poverty Traps: Evidence from Southern Ethiopia," 2006 Annual Meeting, August 12-18, 2006, Queensland, Australia 25487, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    31. Kristiansen, Stein, 2003. "Linkages and rural non-farm employment creation: Changing challenges and policies in Indonesia," ESA Working Papers 289077, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Agricultural Development Economics Division (ESA).
    32. Ramsès H. Abul Naga & Enrico Bolzani, 2006. "Poverty and Permanent Income: A Methodology for Cross-Section Data," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 81, pages 195-223.
    33. Lisa A. Cameron & Christopher Worswick, 2003. "The Labor Market as a Smoothing Device: Labor Supply Responses to Crop Loss," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 7(2), pages 327-341, May.
    34. Anjini Kochar, 1999. "Smoothing Consumption by Smoothing Income: Hours-of-Work Responses to Idiosyncratic Agricultural Shocks in Rural India," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 81(1), pages 50-61, February.
    35. John McPeak, 2004. "Contrasting income shocks with asset shocks: livestock sales in northern Kenya," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 56(2), pages 263-284, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Francesca Modena & Christopher L. Gilbert, 2012. "Household Responses to Economic and Demographic Shocks: Marginal Logit Analysis using Indonesian Data," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(9), pages 1306-1322, September.
    2. Aditya Kusuma & Bethanna Jackson & Ilan Noy, 2018. "A viable and cost-effective weather index insurance for rice in Indonesia," The Geneva Risk and Insurance Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Association for the Study of Insurance Economics (The Geneva Association), vol. 43(2), pages 186-218, September.
    3. Nguyen, Giang & Nguyen, Trung Thanh, 2020. "Exposure to weather shocks: A comparison between self-reported record and extreme weather data," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 117-138.
    4. Azizbek Tokhirov, 2024. "Income Fluctuations and Subjective Well-being: The Mediating Effects of Occupational Switching and Remittances," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 25(8), pages 1-37, December.
    5. Shaikh, Salman Ahmed, 2015. "Financial Inclusiveness in Islamic Banking: Comparison of Ideals and Practices Based on Maqasid-e-Shari’ah," MPRA Paper 68745, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Azomahou T.T. & Yitbarek E., 2015. "Poverty persistence and informal risk management: Micro evidence from urban Ethiopia," MERIT Working Papers 2015-006, United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT).
    7. Kailash Chandra Pradhan & Shrabani Mukherjee, 2018. "Covariate and Idiosyncratic Shocks and Coping Strategies for Poor and Non-poor Rural Households in India," Journal of Quantitative Economics, Springer;The Indian Econometric Society (TIES), vol. 16(1), pages 101-127, March.
    8. Kumar, Neha & Quisumbing, Agnes R., 2014. "Gender and resilience:," IFPRI book chapters, in: Fan, Shenggen & Pandya-Lorch, Rajul & Yosef, Sivan (ed.), 2013 Global Food Policy Report, chapter 17, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    9. Santoso, Rokhedi Priyo & Sriyana, Jaka, 2020. "The Effect of Idiosyncratic Shocks on Labor Market Outcomes of Informal Households in Indonesia," Jurnal Ekonomi Malaysia, Faculty of Economics and Business, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, vol. 54(2), pages 13-27.
    10. J. V. Rush, 2018. "The Impact of Natural Disasters on Education in Indonesia," Economics of Disasters and Climate Change, Springer, vol. 2(2), pages 137-158, July.
    11. Vial, Virginie & Hanoteau, Julien, 2015. "Returns to Micro-Entrepreneurship in an Emerging Economy: A Quantile Study of Entrepreneurial Indonesian Households’ Welfare," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 142-157.
    12. Balli Faruk & Pierucci Eleonora, 2020. "Risk Sharing and Institutional Quality: Evidence from OECD and Emerging Economies," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 67(1), pages 53-71, February.
    13. Elisabetta De Antoni, 2009. "Money and finance: the heterodox views of R. Clower, A. Leijonhufvud and H. Minsky," Department of Economics Working Papers 0908, Department of Economics, University of Trento, Italia.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Marco d’Errico & Donato Romano & Rebecca Pietrelli, 2018. "Household resilience to food insecurity: evidence from Tanzania and Uganda," Food Security: The Science, Sociology and Economics of Food Production and Access to Food, Springer;The International Society for Plant Pathology, vol. 10(4), pages 1033-1054, August.
    2. Tran, Van Q., 2015. "Household's coping strategies and recoveries from shocks in Vietnam," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 15-29.
    3. Renata Baborska & Emilio Hernandez & Emiliano Magrini & Cristian Morales-Opazo, 2020. "The impact of financial inclusion on rural food security experience: A perspective from low-and middle-income countries," Review of Development Finance Journal, Chartered Institute of Development Finance, vol. 10(2), pages 1-18.
    4. Barnett, Barry J. & Barrett, Christopher B. & Skees, Jerry R., 2008. "Poverty Traps and Index-Based Risk Transfer Products," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 36(10), pages 1766-1785, October.
    5. Gaurav, Sarthak, 2015. "Are Rainfed Agricultural Households Insured? Evidence from Five Villages in Vidarbha, India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 719-736.
    6. Emiliano Magrini & Pierluigi Montalbano, 2012. "Trade openness and vulnerability to poverty: Vietnam in the long-run (1992-2008)," Working Paper Series 3512, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    7. Yoshito Takasaki & Bradford L. Barham & Oliver T. Coomes, 2010. "Smoothing Income against Crop Flood Losses in Amazonia: Rain Forest or Rivers as a Safety Net?," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 14(1), pages 48-63, February.
    8. Stefan Dercon, 2002. "Income Risk, Coping Strategies, and Safety Nets," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 17(2), pages 141-166, September.
    9. d'Errico, Marco & Di Giuseppe, Stefania, 2018. "Resilience mobility in Uganda: A dynamic analysis," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 78-96.
    10. Digvijay S. Negi & Christopher B. Barrett, 2024. "Consumption Smoothing, Commodity Markets, and Informal Transfers," Working Papers 116, Ashoka University, Department of Economics.
    11. Echevin, Damien, 2011. "Characterizing poverty and vulnerability in rural Haiti: a multilevel decomposition approach," MPRA Paper 35659, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Jin, Ling & Chen, Kevin Z. & Yu, Bingxin & Filipski, Mateusz, 2015. "Farmers' Coping Strategies against an Aggregate Shock: Evidence from the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake," 2015 Conference, August 9-14, 2015, Milan, Italy 211814, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    13. Morduch, Jonathan, 1999. "Between the State and the Market: Can Informal Insurance Patch the Safety Net?," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 14(2), pages 187-207, August.
    14. Kazianga, Harounan & Udry, Christopher, 2006. "Consumption smoothing? Livestock, insurance and drought in rural Burkina Faso," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(2), pages 413-446, April.
    15. Jin, Ling & Chen, Kevin Z. & Yu, Bingxin & Huang, Zuhui, 2011. "How prudent are rural households in developing transition economies:," IFPRI discussion papers 1127, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    16. Echevin, Damien, 2011. "Vulnerability to asset-poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa," MPRA Paper 35660, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Santos, Paulo & Barrett, Christopher B., 2011. "Persistent poverty and informal credit," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(2), pages 337-347, November.
    18. Chetty, Raj & Looney, Adam, 2006. "Consumption smoothing and the welfare consequences of social insurance in developing economies," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(12), pages 2351-2356, December.
    19. Giles, John, 2006. "Is life more risky in the open? Household risk-coping and the opening of China's labor markets," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(1), pages 25-60, October.
    20. Carter, Michael R. & Lybbert, Travis J., 2012. "Consumption versus asset smoothing: testing the implications of poverty trap theory in Burkina Faso," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(2), pages 255-264.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Shocks; Coping strategies; Consumption smoothing; Asset smoothing;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:asieco:v:24:y:2013:i:c:p:158-171. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/asieco .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.
    pFad - Phonifier reborn

    Pfad - The Proxy pFad of © 2024 Garber Painting. All rights reserved.

    Note: This service is not intended for secure transactions such as banking, social media, email, or purchasing. Use at your own risk. We assume no liability whatsoever for broken pages.


    Alternative Proxies:

    Alternative Proxy

    pFad Proxy

    pFad v3 Proxy

    pFad v4 Proxy