The world's most deprived: Characteristics and causes of extreme poverty and hunger

Poverty, Poor, Statistics, Hunger,

Intrahousehold preference heterogeneity and demand for labor-saving agricultural technology

Evaluations of agricultural technologies rarely consider the implications of how adoption may alter the labor allocation of different individuals within a household. We examine intrahousehold decision-making dynamics that shape smallholder households' decision to use mechanical rice transplanting (MRT), a technology that disproportionately influences demand for women's labor. To study the adoption decision, we experimentally estimate the willingness to pay for MRT services both at the individual and household level. We find that women value MRT more than men, especially when they participate in transplanting on their own farms. This preference heterogeneity is evident in the unconditional differences between women's and men's valuation and differences conditional on their individual observable characteristics. Despite having stronger preferences for MRT, women have less influence on the household's technology adoption decision than men. This differential influence over the MRT adoption decision reflects the intrahousehold power structure: in households where women have less control over assets, they also have less influence over the MRT adoption decision. Our results highlight how technological changes interact with unobserved, gender-based intrahousehold power relations to influence agricultural production decisions and, by extension, the gendered allocation of labor and welfare of women.Innovation Policy and Scaling (IPS); Transformation Strategie

Female social networks and learning about a new technology in eastern Uttar Pradesh, India

Despite evidence of the importance of differences in the source and type of information that women and men acquire, there is a persistent assumption that these gender dimensions of information acquisition are irrelevant to decision-making in cereal systems in South Asia. Yet women do play a fundamental role in many agricultural decisions and thus have a stake in the choice of technologies selected by the household. The paper attempts to understand women’s involvement in agricultural female networks and if they learn about a new agricultural technology, laser land leveling, through their social networks. Further, the study analyzes whether these female network effects have any influence on household demand for the new technology. Data for this study was collected as part of a research project on laser land leveling in 24 villages drawn randomly from three districts of eastern Uttar Pradesh, India. A binding experimental auction was conducted to elicit demand for a new technology, laser land leveling (LLL), with a randomly selected group of farmers, of which 80 percent were male household heads. The study finds evidence that factors that shape farmers’ wives networks are very different from those that shape links between their husbands. Overall, women who are poorer and less educated tend to have more agricultural information contacts than wealthier and more educated women. We find that if a wife has an adopting wife in her network, her husband bid Rs. 81 more in the auction than if she did not. While we cannot say that the network effect through the wives is stronger, we can say there is evidence that there are separate and significant male and female network effects

Women’s Work and Agricultural Productivity Gaps in India

Most studies on gender gaps in agricultural productivity leverage within-household differences between plots managed by women and men. Such a gender-based division of plot management simplifies empirical tests for productivity differences, but it is not a common arrangement for agricultural households outside some locations in sub-Saharan Africa. In most rural households, women and men jointly participate in production, which complicates identification of gender- based productivity differences. This study proposes a broader empirical test of productivity gaps that applies to such systems, and that is rooted not explicitly in gender but in gender-based inequities. Specifically, we explore productivity gaps in rice-cultivating Indian households, where women and men perform specific and distinct cultivation tasks. We measure productivity gaps based on the differential use of family and hired female labor across households, then compare them with gaps based on the differential use of family and hired male labor. Using plot-level data, we identify significant gender-based productivity gaps after controlling for input use, plot- and household-level characteristics, and using village fixed effects and machine learning estimators to address selection and model misspecification concerns. Based on this identification strategy, households using family female labor have lower agricultural productivity, on average, than those also hiring female workers, such that foregone production value is greater than the cost of hiring women. We find suggestive evidence that this gap stems from skill differences between hired and family female workers. In contrast, we find no evidence of a similar gap based on the differential use of family and hired male labor. Overall, household welfare is lower because of gender inequities that shape women's work opportunities. These findings highlight the potential productivity implications of expanding women's labor choices, including both on- and off-farm job opportunities

Intrahousehold valuation, preference heterogeneity, and demand of an agricultural technology in Bihar, India

Measuring intrahousehold preferences for the production activities of the household is challenging as the decisions are made jointly and it is often not possible to switch spheres of influence within a household. An example of a situation where divergent preferences may exist amongst household members even though household constraints masks the household decision is that of rice transplanting in India. In many parts of India, manual rice transplanting in puddled conditions tends to be a task primarily reserved for women, and is highly labor-intensive and arduous. Quite recently, mechanical rice transplanters (MRT), which are a labor-saving production technology, are being promoted in rice-producing areas in the country. We elicit intrahousehold heterogeneity in preferences for mechanical rice transplanting by combining hypothetical and experimental elicitation mechanisms. After informing randomly selected agricultural households about mechanical rice transplanting, we elicited attribute-based non-monetary preferences and monetary hypothetical willingness to pay measures for mechanical and traditional transplanting for women and men in the same household from a sample of 965 households in Bihar, India. Soon after, we conducted village-level, incentive-compatible auctions for providing actual mechanical rice transplanting services, which allowed us to elicit experimental measures of household heads’ willingness to pay. Our study finds evidence of deviations from hypothetical to experimental valuations. However, most individuals did not change their pure preferences for the technology and instead refined their willingness to pay. Knowing the technology service provider during the auctions reduced the difference between hypothetical and individual valuations. Bargaining power of female household members did not play any role in shifting the willingness to pay measures. Women in households where only family labor is used for transplanting value MRTs higher than men by Rs. 162.69, which is driven by their preferences instead of a difference in their individual characteristics