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Sustainable Socio-Economic Welfare and Agricultural Employment in ECOWAS: Is there a Non-Linear Relationship?

Agriculture is central to welfare especially in the context of developing countries which include those of ECOWAS, however among those individuals’ dependent on agriculture for their livelihood are those living in poverty and earning low incomes amongst other living standards. On the other hand, sustainable socio-economic welfare is not given much attention in the welfare literature compared to other welfare categorisations such as socio-economic welfare and economic welfare. This study explores the effect of agricultural employment on sustainable socio-economic welfare as well as the possibility of a non-linear relationship between the aforementioned variables in a balanced panel of Fifteen ECOWAS member countries. Human Sustainable Development Index (HSDI) was used as proxy for Sustainable socio-economic welfare, while the proportion of employed individuals realising a living from agriculture is the measure for agricultural employment. The results from utilising panel data fixed effects estimation show that agricultural employment adversely and significantly resulted in sustainable socio-economic welfare declining while the hypothesis of non-linear relationship between the aforementioned variables was not supported. Consequently, the study recommends that ECOWAS member country governments in raising welfare levels focus necessarily on sustainable socio-economic welfare rather than socio-economic welfare that has been the traditional focus of welfare efforts. Also ECOWAS country governments should ensure that agriculture sector interventions effectively target the poor and vulnerable households relying on agriculture for their livelihood.