BACKGROUND: Tobacco farming has been shifting to lower-income countries for decades. Within this context, occupation-specific health shocks, especially green tobacco sickness (GTS), interact with fragile and/or poor health systems. These tobacco farming-related health shocks can impose economic costs on these farmers through out-of-pocket medical expenses and lost productivity. This paper investigates one important aspect of productivity by examining how GTS-related illnesses affect smallholder farmers’ on-farm labor use, intra-household labor reallocation, and off-farm labor use (e.g. providing his/her labour to other farmers). The findings can be evidence to support implementation of WHO FCTC Article 17, which focuses on viable alternative livelihoods for those working in the tobacco sector, including farmers.
METHODS: This study uses 2016 and 2019 Kenyan household economic survey data from the Political Economy of Tobacco Farming Study and appropriate econometric techniques to study the relationship between health shocks and smallholder households’ labor use. Farmers from 277 smallholder households are included in the analysis. These data allow us to investigate labor-use dynamics at both household and individual levels and to control for unobserved household heterogeneity.
RESULTS: We find that, at the household level, GTS-related illness did not affect aggregate on-farm labor use, but it reallocated the farm work within the household. It reduced the ability of the household to employ hired workers. In fact, each extra member getting a GTS-related illness reduced likelihood of the household hiring male and female labor by 3.5 and 4.7 percentage points respectively. Furthermore, for each person in the household getting a GTS-related illness, this reduced the likelihood of that household providing labor for off-farm activities by 3.3 percentage points.
CONCLUSIONS: GTS-related illnesses reduced hired labor likely through reduced household income. It also reduced participation in off-farm activities and implies a reduction in off-farm income. The off-farm income can supplement on-farm income and is important for smallholder farmers.