Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Off The Farm: An Evaluation Of Non-Farm Earnings And Employment On Poverty Alleviation In Rural Nicaragua, Magaly Vanessa Saenz Somarriba

Graduate Masters Theses

In Nicaragua, poverty disproportionately affects the rural population. Over the last two decades, rural inhabitants have increased their participation in the Rural Non-Farm (RNF) sector. This study uses four waves of data from the Living Standard Measurement Survey (LSMS) between 2001 and 2014 to test whether the transition to the RNF sector decreases poverty rates and increases consumption. To account for the endogeneity of RNF participation and measures of well-being like consumption, I use an instrumental variables approach. I use a policy enacted in 2006 that induced plausibly exogenous variation in electrification rates over the same period to instrument for …