Authors
ABSTRACT
This study analyzed the role of cooperatives in alleviating poverty among calamansi farming households in Oriental Mindoro, Philippines. The Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), and Endogenous Switching Regression (ESR) were employed to analyze the poverty alleviating impacts of cooperative membership. The MPI of farmer-members and non-members were estimated at 1% and 11%, respectively suggesting that more non-member farmers experience multidimensional poverty than farmer-members. Results of the ESR model show that cooperative membership significantly reduces poverty by 4.44 points when assessed in terms of multidimensional deprivation index. In the counterfactual case, non-member farmers would have reduced the deprivation index by about 19.14 had they chosen to be a cooperative member.
