The Impact of Using Small-Scale Irrigation Motor Pumps on Farmers’ Household Incomes in Ethiopia: A Quasi-Experimental Approach

• Main Authors: Wubamlak Ayichew Workneh, Jun Takada, Shusuke Matsushita
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2020-10-01
• Series: Sustainability
• Subjects: impact evaluation; irrigation motor pump; propensity score matching (PSM); quasi-experiment; treatment effect
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/19/8142

Sectoral economic growth data in Ethiopia show that the agriculture sector has the lowest growth, which is caused by frequent drought and inefficient technologies, among other factors. As a result, the productivities of land and labor, as well as the income of small-scale farm households, are very low, and rural areas have a relatively high poverty rate. A quasi-experiment was applied to understand the impact of using small-scale irrigation motor pumps on farmers’ livelihood improvement. Specifically, a survey was conducted in 2019 on a sample of 92 small-scale irrigation motor pump and canal irrigation users as the treatment and control groups. The weighted propensity score matching method was applied to eliminate initial differences and adjust sampling proportions across the groups. Based on the average treatment effect on the treated estimation results, we cannot state that the mean income difference in small-scale irrigation motor pump users and canal irrigation system users is different from zero. This indicates that countries with little capital to invest in large-scale irrigation projects can introduce household-level small-scale irrigation motor pumps to improve farmers’ incomes.