Abstract
AbstractAlthough off-farm work plays a significant role in facilitating agricultural production and rural development and improving household welfare, little is known about whether off-farm work can promote fruit and vegetable consumption in rural areas of developing countries. This paper sheds new insights by estimating the impact of off-farm work on fruit and vegetable consumption, measured by purchasing frequencies and consumption expenditures. We employ a two-stage residual inclusion estimator to address the self-selection bias and analyze data collected from 558 rural households in China. The results show that household heads’ off-farm work promotes rural households’ fruit and vegetable consumption by significantly increasing purchasing frequencies and expenditures. Further analysis confirms that household heads' off-farm work participation, rather than all household members, plays a prominent role in promoting household fruit and vegetable consumption. We also find that farmers’ behaviours of growing fruits and vegetables appear to substitute their purchasing behaviours.
Highlights
Fruits and vegetables are essential parts of a healthy diet
We employed the 2SRI model to address the endogeneity issue associated with off-farm work
The empirical results showed that off-farm work participation of household heads significantly increases fruit and vegetable purchasing frequencies and consumption expenditures
Summary
Fruits and vegetables are essential parts of a healthy diet. Their inadequate daily consumption would result in micronutrient deficiencies and a wide range of diseases (e.g. heart diseases, cancer, and diabetes). The data analyzed in this study are collected from rural households in the Shandong, Henan, and Anhui provinces of China. We estimate how the off-farm income share and the off-farm worker share in a household affect fruit and vegetable consumption. The fact indicates that off-farm work is an endogenous variable in the models estimating off-farm work impacts on fruit and vegetable consumption. We employ the 2SRI model to estimate the impact of off-farm work on fruit and vegetable consumption. We have applied the Hansen J-tests to examine the issues of overidentification restrictions, and the results confirm the validity and effectiveness of the selected IVs. In the second stage, the 2SRI approach estimates the impacts of off-farm work on fruit and vegetable consumption, captured by purchasing frequency and consumption expenditure. In 2019, rural people employed in farm and off-farm sectors in Shandong, Henan, and Anhui provinces were 28.91, 44.17, and 29.69 million, respectively
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