Khat Production and Household Welfare among Khat Growers Ethiopia

Abstract

ABSTRACT

The main objective of this study was to examine the welfare effects of khat production on households. Our finding shows that, khat production was found to be associated with better living conditions; this was not the case with regard to improvements in household income and housing quality. On the other hand, khat growers had generally better food consumption, which could be due to the immediate but seemingly temporary effect of increasing household income. Given the implications of these aspects of food consumption as key elements for food security at household or individual levels, our findings call for maximum caution as to what policy implications should be drawn since inferences from these findings may be misleading. That is, notwithstanding the positive effects in terms of food consumption and hence food security, khat production could have aggregate negative effect on aggregate through reducing crop production and it is trade-off between them.