Willingness to Pay for Insured Loans in Northern Ghana

Index insurance has been heralded as a potential solution to systemic risks faced by smallholder farmers in developing countries by covering risks such as drought, low crop yields, and low market prices. Despite its potential, demand has remained low in many early experiments and field trials. Little research has been done, however, on demand for insurance as it is coupled with other services such as loans. Here, willingness to pay for drought index insurance backed loans is investigated using contingent valuation methodology. Results demonstrate that on average the sample population has a willingness to pay high enough to sustain a market viable insured loan product without subsidization with 56% of the target population expressing a willingness to pay for an insured loan at the market price. Results also show a positive and significant WTP for individual policies and to avoid basis risk resulting from rainfall measurement

CAN INDEX INSURANCE IMPROVE CREDIT ACCESS AMONG SMALLHODLER FARMERS IN GHANA? DOES IT DIFFER OVER MALE AND FEMALE FARMERS?

The majority of the world’s poor live in rural areas and rely on agriculture for their income. Therefore, increasing agricultural efficiency via technology adoption is critical to reducing poverty in developing agrarian economies such as those in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Despite its apparent advantages, SSA has one of the lowest adoption rates. Accordingly, the objective of this paper is to investigate if the availability of meso-and micro-level insurance encourages access to credit by relaxing demand side and supply side constraints. We further disaggregate the effects by gender of the farmer to see if any differential impacts exist over female versus male farmers. Using a randomized control trial and difference-in-difference estimation, we find that availability of meso-level insurance, when the banks are the policy holders, increases the likelihood of agricultural loan approvals for smallholder farmers. Gender level analysis shows that the likelihood increases for both female and male farmers