Baseline Study of Striga Control using IR Maize in Western Kenya

will be shown latter in this section. The marginal effects from the logit model provideinteresting insights into the potential effects of technology and policy interventions onhousehold poverty. The marginal effects essentially constitute results of a policy simulation.The marginal effects were computed only for significant variables and converted intopercentage changes in the probability of being poor associated with a unit change in the valueof an explanatory variable, holding all other factors constant.Striga infestation, in terms of the number of years it has been on the maize farm, has theexpected positive and significant influence on household poverty, implying that the longerStriga stays on a maize farm, the more likely the household is to be poor. Perceived Strigadamage on maize yields, weighted by the share of maize in total household income, has avery significant positive influence on household poverty, indicating that Striga damage hasbeen more severe among households who derive much of their income from maizeproduction. On the other hand, households that adopt integrated Striga control methods,involving uprooting and burning, tend to have 15% lower probability of being poor.The results show that an additional child to a household, holding other factors constant, raisesthe probability of being poor by 12%, implying that 10 additional children will almostcertainly make an average household slide into poverty. The probability of being poorincreases with age, at the rate of 0.3% per year. An additional year of schooling forhousehold heads reduces a household’s probability of being poor by 1.3%, implying that ahousehold headed by a farmer with 10 more years of education than the average level ofeducation (4.4 years) of an average household is 13% less likely to be poor.34