He said, she said: The impact of gender and marriage perceptions on self and proxy reporting of labor

Abstract

The accurate estimation of agricultural employment and labor productivity are crucial in understanding opportunities for improvements in productivity and economic growth in developing countries. Available labor statistics mostly come from surveys in developing countries, which mostly rely on one person providing information about all household members. However, there are only a few empirical studies that provide a framework for understanding the potential advantages and disadvantages of using self and proxy reporters to collect such data. Using self and proxy reports from surveys in Ghana, we find significant differences in estimated labor productivity with very different implications in terms of policy-making. We find that differences in reporting are most likely due to gender and marriage satisfaction of both self and proxy reporters, so differences in reporting are due to bias and are not classical measurement error.