The Monsoon Shock in Rural Nepal : Panel Evidence from the Household Risk and Vulnerability Survey
Monsoon rainfall is a key driver of economic life in rural Nepal as well as a major source of income variability. In this paper, the authors use a newly collected 3-year panel data set, representative of rural Nepal, merged with global monthly prec...
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| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2019
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/147481575970144562/The-Monsoon-Shock-in-Rural-Nepal-Panel-Evidence-from-the-Household-Risk-and-Vulnerability-Survey http://hdl.handle.net/10986/33078 |
| Summary: | Monsoon rainfall is a key driver of
economic life in rural Nepal as well as a major source of
income variability. In this paper, the authors use a newly
collected 3-year panel data set, representative of rural
Nepal, merged with global monthly precipitation data to
investigate the nature of the monsoon shock and to quantify
household vulnerability to it. The authors find that the
impact of the monsoon shock is concentrated in communities
where water-intensive paddy dominates wet season cultivation
and, coincidently, where groundwater irrigates dry season
cultivation. In these communities, household size, area
cultivated, agricultural and non-agricultural income, and
household per capita food consumption measured nine months
after the wet season harvest, all decline in response to a
negative monsoon rainfall shock. A one standard deviation
fall in monsoon precipitation is estimated to reduce total
income by 3.8 percent and lead to a 0.8 percent drop in food
consumption for the average rural household, but these
figures rise to 11.5 percent and 3.3 percent, respectively,
for households in the most paddy-intensive communities.
These results have implications for social protection
policies, especially in the lowlands of Nepal. |
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