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Traps and Thresholds in Pastoralist Mobility
Author(s) -
Toth Russell
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
american journal of agricultural economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.949
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1467-8276
pISSN - 0002-9092
DOI - 10.1093/ajae/aau064
Subject(s) - herding , pastoralism , livelihood , poverty , asset (computer security) , stock (firearms) , economics , poverty trap , econometrics , geography , livestock , computer science , economic growth , computer security , agriculture , archaeology , forestry
This article presents a new approach to identifying poverty traps in East African pastoralist communities. A flexible semiparametric estimation procedure is used to identify a bifurcation in the propensity to engage in the asset‐based, mobile herding livelihood, in comparison to the sedentary alternative, as a function of herd size. The identified threshold is consistent with previous evidence on poverty traps based on modeling herd stock dynamics. The approach contributes to an emerging literature that seeks to identify poverty traps through testing the implications of the posited behavioral mechanism behind the trap, as opposed to directly modeling asset dynamics. The approach is further employed to provide complementary evidence on the relationship between ability and assets in sustaining mobile pastoralism.