Environmentally sustainable socio-economic welfare and agricultural employment: evidence from ECOWAS
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IOP Publishing
Abstract
Description
Environmental sustainability considerations in socio-economic welfare has been argued in
recent welfare literature. With an emphasis on the role of agricultural employment, this present study
explores environmentally sustainable socio-economic welfare in ECOWAS, which features countries
abundant in agriculture resources, although with low levels of socio-economic welfare and low carbon
emissions. The study utilises a balanced panel data set of observations in respect of all fifteen ECOWAS
countries over the period of 2010 to 2019. The Human Sustainable Development Index (HSDI) was used
to measure environmentally sustainable socio-economic welfare. On the other hand, agricultural
employment was measured using the percentage of the employed population earning their livelihoods
from agricultural employment. Panel data fixed effects estimation was used to estimate the model for the
study, and the findings were that agricultural employment had a significant adverse influence on
environmentally sustainable socio-economic welfare as measured by HSDI, while a further comparison of
the findings with that of welfare measured using HDI indicated that agricultural employment also
adversely affected HDI. The study recommends that socio-economic welfare be assessed from the view
point of environmental sustainability, and the governments of ECOWAS member countries provide
strong governance including strong laws and policies to ensure that socio-economic welfare that is
environmentally sustainable is realised as abundant agricultural resources as well as agricultural
employment are well managed.
Keywords
HB Economic Theory, HC Economic History and Conditions