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Does drought affect smallholder health expenditures? Evidence from Fars Province, Iran

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Abstract

Drought is one of the most frequently occurring natural disasters and results in long-term social, economic and environmental impacts that affect large areas and populations. Over the past decade, Iran has experienced a very severe drought that has affected millions of people. In this paper, we employ a standard consumption regression model to perform a microlevel analysis of the effects of drought on small-farm household health expenditures in rural Iran. We surveyed a sample of 300 small-farm households in the Marvdasht County in Fars Province, Iran. The results showed that drought significantly negatively affects smallholder health spending. Farm households that are affected by severe drought decrease their health expenditures more than less-affected households. Further, for drought-affected farmers, health expenditures are a necessity, as the income elasticity of health expenditures is as low as 0.15. Our findings indicate the importance of designing and implementing a health policy that includes the provision of healthcare services in drought-affected villages by the government, which plays an important role in coping with the health effects of drought.

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Notes

  1. Centers for Disaster Control and Prevention, 2016.

  2. The main public health insurance programs are the following: the Social Security Organization, the Medical Service Organization, the military Personnel Insurance Organization and the Emdade-Emam Committee.

  3. http://www.arkanteb.com/site/en/tips/69-iran-health-insurance-in-brief.html.

  4. Following the Islamic Revolution of Iran, the government focused more on rural areas and established the Iranian primary healthcare system to improve access to healthcare with the intent to reduce the gap between health outcomes in urban and rural areas. The primary healthcare system in rural Iran comprises a network of Health Houses and rural health centers.

  5. Extreme drought: SPEI < − 2, Severe drought − 2 < SPEI < − 1.5, Moderate Drought − 1.5 < SPEI < − 1, Weak Drought: − 1 < SPEI < 0.0.

  6. http://www.fao.org/resilience/actualites-evenements/histoire-detail/fr/c/296089/.

  7. “The final report of agricultural drought, agricultural year 2016”, National Drought Warning Monitoring Center of Iran (NDWMC), Page: 20.

  8. Multi-stage sampling refers to sampling plans where the sampling is carried out in stages using smaller and smaller sampling units at each stage. For example, in a two-stage sampling design, a sample of primary units is selected, and then a sample of secondary units is selected within each primary unit.

  9. According to the Persian calendar, the crop year in Iran starts occurs from late September until September of the following year.

  10. It should be taken into consideration that all expenditures and incomes in our estimation are in US dollars. The currency in Iran is rails, and we have converted all money amounts to US dollars using the exchange rate of 2016. https://www.cbi.ir/ExRates/rates_en.aspx.

  11. Bootstrap critical values in 10%, 5% and 1% are as follows: 3.23210, 4.303885 and 8.3174.

  12. ANOVA is used to determine whether there are any statistically significant differences between the mean of two or more independent groups.

  13. The independent t test compares the means of two independent groups to determine whether there is statistical evidence that the associated population means are significantly different.

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Acknowledgements

This study was financed by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation under the award number 40.18.0.009WW. We would like to thank the Stiftung Fiat Panis, Germany, for providing funds to conduct field research work in Iran. Further, we extend our gratitude to Mr. Mohammadi and Mr. Khalifeh for their support during data collection. Lastly, we greatly acknowledge the participation of rural farm households in the surveys.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Area 2: Land Use and Governance, Working Group: Sustainable Land Use in Developing Countries, Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), Eberswalder Strasse 84, 15374, Müncheberg, Germany

    Niloofar Khalili, Muhammad Arshad, Harald Kächele & Klaus Müller

  2. Department of Agricultural Economics, College of Agriculture, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran

    Zakaria Farajzadeh

  3. Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development, Schicklerstraße 5, 16225, Eberswalde, Germany

    Harald Kächele

  4. Economics and Policies of Rural Areas, Albrecht Daniel Thaer Institute of Agricultural and Horticultural Sciences, Humboldt University, 10117, Berlin, Germany

    Niloofar Khalili, Muhammad Arshad & Klaus Müller

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  1. Niloofar Khalili
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Khalili, N., Arshad, M., Farajzadeh, Z. et al. Does drought affect smallholder health expenditures? Evidence from Fars Province, Iran. Environ Dev Sustain 23, 765–788 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-020-00608-1

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