Cash crop liberalization and poverty alleviation in Africa: evidence from Malawi
以马拉维白肋烟自由化为例，研究发现种植经济作物的农户收入更高，但因收入集中且季节性，食物购买增加并未显著提高人均食物摄入量，农户更多依赖非农收入平滑消费。
Abstract This article uses the case of burley tobacco liberalization in Malawi to investigate the efficacy of cash crop liberalization as an instrument for poverty alleviation in sub‐Saharan Africa. The principal justification for cash crop liberalization is that markets allow farm households to increase their incomes by producing that which provides the highest return to their productive resources and use the cash to buy consumption goods. Using a latent welfare model, we find that households that selected to grow cash crops had higher incomes than those that did not grow cash crops. However, we also find that due to the lumpiness and seasonality of cash crop incomes, higher household incomes, while increasing food purchases did not significantly affect per capita food intake. Irrespective of participation in cash crops, for much of the cropping season rural households seem to rely more on nonfarm income for expenditure and consumption smoothing.