For each equation, we include explanatory variables for age, age squared, education, household size, distance from the off-farm job, off-farm wage, and whether they obtain health insurance from an off-farm source.
As expected, more spouses (30%) reported that they received insurance coverage from an off-farm employment source.
(a) Different strategies are represented according to annual household income from livestock, agriculture, conservation and off-farm sources.
The farm households earn most of their income from rice crop, vegetables and from off-farm sources.
The high livestock, low cash group also had large households, with income from livestock, crops and off-farm sources.
From these results, we calculate the predicted probability of the operator having health insurance from off-farm sources holding the spouse's equation constant and vice versa.
The explanatory variables (H O ) and (H S ) are dummy variables representing whether the operator or spouse obtains health insurance coverage from off-farm sources.
While overall few Maasai households earn from wildlife, and the sums they make do not compare with main income streams from livestock, crops and off-farm sources, landowning households close to the MMNR saw real benefits from conservation-based enterprises.
Unless you or someone else is willing and able to sponsor the farm with an off-farm day job or another external source of income, you're going to have to crunch the numbers until you're in the black.
Receiving benefits like health insurance or life insurance with an off-farm job is a very important reason to participate in off-farm work, both for farm women and farm men.
The proceeds of an off-farm job could be used as a hedge against on-farm income risk and off-farm work may also mean less time for on-farm risk mitigation.
