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Does spatial proximity to small towns matter for rural livelihoods? A propensity score matching analysis in Ethiopia

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Abstract

The spatial dimension of rural–urban linkage has become a new subject of debate in regional development. In most empirical research the focus has usually been on the role of small urban centers in rural development. However, the effects of different particulars of the linkage such as spatial proximity to small towns on income of the hinterlands’ people have been less explored. The central purpose of this paper is, hence, assessing the effect of spatial proximity to small towns on income of the people living in the surrounding rural hinterlands. It also provides a bird’s-eye view of the livelihood strategies used by rural households in using town services. A propensity score matching technique is employed to estimate the effects. It is apparent in the results of the study that, controlling for other confounding factors, spatial proximity to small towns has a significantly positive effect on the income of the people living in the surrounding hinterlands. This notion indirectly leads the households living in the farthest hinterlands to adopt a new coping mechanism, i.e. enhancing their social proximity in a way that compensates the opportunity lost as a result of physical distance.

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Notes

  1. To examine the robustness of the estimates, estimations were done based on the rest of the matching algorithms—nearest neighbor matching (Heinrich et al. 2010), Radius matching (Dehejia and Wahba 2002), and Stratification matching (Caliendo and Kopeinig 2005). The results revealed that the corresponding t-values based on the aforementioned algorithms were 3.026, 6.094, and 6.614, respectively implying that being close to the small town made the closer households significantly better off than the households in the farthest hinterlands. These findings are similar to the results of the Kernel matching, as their t-values are greater than 1.96.

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Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to Professor Paul M.de Graaf, Dr. Bertha Vallejo and Dr. Tewodros Tadesse for all their comments and suggestions. All faults remain the authors’ sole responsibility.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Business and Economics, Mekelle University, P.O. Box 451, Mekelle, Ethiopia

    Aradom Gebrekidan Abbay

  2. School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Tilburg University, P.O. Box 90153, 5000 LE, Tilburg, The Netherlands

    Aradom Gebrekidan Abbay

  3. Department of Organizational Studies, School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Tilburg University, P.O. Box 90153, 5000 LE, Tilburg, The Netherlands

    Roel Rutten

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  1. Aradom Gebrekidan Abbay
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  2. Roel Rutten
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Correspondence to Aradom Gebrekidan Abbay.

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Funding: This research was financed by the Netherlands organization for international cooperation in higher education (Nuffic), under Grant no. NICHE/ETH/020, and coordinated by Dr. Bertha Vallejo of Tilburg University, CentER.

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Abbay, A.G., Rutten, R. Does spatial proximity to small towns matter for rural livelihoods? A propensity score matching analysis in Ethiopia. Lett Spat Resour Sci 9, 287–307 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12076-015-0158-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12076-015-0158-y

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