Measuring the impacts of working-age adult mortality on small-scale farm households in Kenya

Using a two-year panel of 1,422 Kenyan households surveyed in 1997 and 2000, we measure how working-age adult mortality affects rural households' size and composition, crop production, asset levels, and off-farm income. We also use adult mortality rates from available data on an HIV-negative sample to predict the proportion of deaths observed during 1997-2000 due to AIDS. Difference-in-differences estimations indicate that the effects of adult mortality are highly sensitive to the gender and position of the deceased family member in the household and to the household's initial asset levels. Results indicate that relatively poor households do not recover quickly from head-of-household adult mortality; effects on crop and nonfarm incomes do not decay at least over the three-year survey interval. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.