The role of public health services (PHS) in agricultural poverty alleviation.

OBJECTIVE: This paper aimed to prove that PHS positively affects agricultural poverty reduction indirectly. METHOD: The study employed previous model of Path Analysis. Three-steps regression was run by standardizing data using Z-score method and clustering variables into exogenous, intermediate and endogenous. The research was conducted in South Sulawesi Province, Indonesia by interviewing 28.20% of total farmers households in the province. RESULTS: The results show that the better access to public health services, the higher the household income will be. Thus, if PHS is nearer, the less time and money will be spent to travel, then the more household income at hand will be saved for agricultural input purchasing. In other words, distance to public health services (PHS) appears to be a crucial part of the findings. Therefore, it is reasonable to say that, the better the access to PHS, the more household income will be and in turn it will alleviate poverty of smallholders (agriculture sector, in broad sense). CONCLUSION: It can be concluded that public health services can help agricultural poverty alleviation though indirectly.