The impact of the Ebola virus disease (EVD) epidemic on agricultural production and livelihoods in Liberia

There is unequivocal evidence in the literature that epidemics adversely affect the livelihoods of individuals, households and communities. However, evidence in the literature is dominated by the socioeconomic impacts of HIV/AIDS and malaria, while evidence on the impact of the Ebola virus disease (EVD) on households’ livelihoods remains fragmented and scant. Our study investigates the effect of the EVD epidemic on the livelihoods of Liberian households using the Sustainable Livelihood Framework (SLF). The study also explores the effect of the EVD epidemic on agricultural production and productive efficiency of farm households using Spatial Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SSFA). We collected data from 623 households across Liberia in 2015, using a systematic random sampling design. Our results indicated that the annual income of sample households from communities where EVD occurred did not differ from the annual income of households from communities where EVD did not occur. Nonetheless, the majority of sample households reported a decrease in their income, compared to their income in the year before the survey. This suggests that the impact of the EVD epidemic might not only have been limited to communities directly affected by the epidemic, but also it may have indirectly affected communities in areas where EVD was not reported. We also found that the community-level incidence of EVD negatively affected crop production of farm households, which may have exacerbated the problem of food insecurity throughout the country. Moreover, we found that the EVD epidemic weakened the society’s trust in Liberian institutions. In a nutshell, our results highlight that epidemics, such as the recent EVD outbreak, may have long-lasting negative effects on the livelihoods of a society and their effect may extend beyond the communities directly affected by the epidemics. This means that the nation’s recovery from the impact of the epidemic would be more challenging, and the social and economic impacts of the epidemic may extend well beyond the end of the health crisis.

现有研究文献已提供确凿证据表明，流行病会对个人、家庭及社区的生计造成负面影响。然而，现有文献中的相关证据多集中于艾滋病（HIV/AIDS）与疟疾的社会经济影响，而关于埃博拉病毒病（Ebola Virus Disease, EVD）对家庭生计影响的研究证据依然零散且匮乏。本研究依托可持续生计框架（Sustainable Livelihood Framework, SLF），探究埃博拉疫情对利比里亚家庭生计的影响；同时采用空间随机前沿分析（Spatial Stochastic Frontier Analysis, SSFA），分析埃博拉疫情对农户农业生产及生产效率的影响。本研究于2015年采用系统随机抽样设计，从利比里亚全境收集了623户家庭的调研数据。研究结果显示，埃博拉疫情暴发社区的样本家庭年收入，与未暴发疫情社区的家庭年收入并无显著差异。尽管如此，多数样本家庭表示，其收入较调研前一年出现了下滑。这表明埃博拉疫情的影响可能并未局限于直接受疫情波及的社区，还可能间接影响到未报告埃博拉病例地区的社区。此外，研究发现社区层面的埃博拉疫情发病率对农户的作物生产产生了负面影响，这可能加剧了全国范围内的粮食不安全问题。再者，本研究发现埃博拉疫情削弱了民众对利比里亚公共机构的信任。简言之，本研究结果表明，诸如此次埃博拉疫情暴发之类的流行病，可能会对一个社会的生计造成长期负面影响，且其影响范围可能超出直接受疫情影响的社区。这意味着该国从疫情影响中复苏的难度将更大，而疫情带来的社会与经济影响可能远超卫生危机结束的时间节点。