Household Production Decisions Research Articles

Gender, Information and the Efficiency of Household Production Decisions: An Experiment in Rural Togo

Why do farm households inefficiently allocate resources across the plots they cultivate? We explore how these production inefficiencies relate to consumption decisions and information sharing within the household. In a lab-in-the-field experiment, male producers allocate too few inputs to their wife's plot, failing to maximize household aggregate profits. They do transfer more inputs when the returns from that plot are higher. Experimental manipulation of information on these returns triggers heterogeneous responses across households. We provide a theoretical framework that rationalizes these findings and further leads to sharp predictions. Joint contribution to a household public good compels spouses to make efficient production decisions. Only households who are in a separate-sphere regime experience inefficiency in farm production and are unable to effectively communicate on returns to avoid extra losses. Consistent with this framework, when we experimentally offer an ex post information verification mechanism, additional losses due to information asymmetries are prevented.

Does access to local markets influence child labor? Evidence from rural Uganda

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship between access to rural product markets and the extent and nature of child labor. It is built on the view that if physical markets can shape rural development through, for instance, influencing prices, household production decisions, and employment, the associated activity growth could increase child labor. Design/methodology/approach – Using the Uganda National Household Survey, the author combines two methodological approaches: first, a probit model to estimate the probability of a child engaging in labor, and second, a double-hurdle model to analyze the hours of child work. Findings – The author finds that children increase time in domestic work when local product markets are distant, while their time in economic activity declines. A similar pattern is observed for the incidence of child labor. The likelihood of child labor in domestic activity increases for each extra hour of travel to the market, while child labor in economic activity declines. This could reflect the possibility that households may switch child work from market-oriented activities to domestic work when they are remotely located from markets. Results confirm findings from earlier cross-country studies that access to product markets may be detrimental to children. Second, they demonstrate that the effect of the markets varies, depending on the age of children, as well as the nature of the work they engage in. Originality/value – No part of this work has been published anywhere before.

IMPACT OF NUTRITIONAL PERCEPTIONS OF TRADITIONAL AFRICAN VEGETABLES ON FARM HOUSEHOLD PRODUCTION DECISIONS: A CASE STUDY OF SMALLHOLDERS IN TANZANIA

SUMMARYRecent years have seen increasing political interest and growing public health awareness and advocacy for diversifying diets into highly nutritious traditional vegetables, fruits and other nutrition-sensitive crops as a more viable approach to mitigate the growing scourge of malnutrition due to unhealthy and imbalanced diets. These foods contribute essential micronutrients, vitamins, antioxidants, and other health-related phytochemicals to staple-based diets and their consumption is crucial for the attainment of several Millennium Development Goals. Despite their nutritional benefits and the high farm gate values per unit of land, the production and marketing of traditional vegetables from Tanzania and other countries in sub-Saharan Africa are constrained by factors such as poor quality seeds, lack of appropriate market information and support systems, and lack of consumer awareness of their nutritional importance. This paper investigates the determinants and pathways for smallholder participation in traditional African vegetable production and identifies entry points for farmers to increase traditional vegetable production by linking nutritional awareness and promotion with potential high value markets. A primary survey of 181 traditional vegetable growers from five regions of Tanzania indicates that perceptions about the nutritional value of traditional African vegetables are a main driver of household production decisions in the sector. The results of this study provide evidence that farmers tend to grow more African traditional vegetables as compared to other crops based on their increased level of perception towards nutritional value of traditional vegetables along with other factors such as their market value, timely availability of quality certified seeds, willingness to invest in labour, required training for women and better access to credits. Farm size negatively affects growing traditional vegetables, implying that on a comparative basis, smallholders tend to grow more traditional vegetables than larger-farm operators. Thus, more attention should be given to reducing production and its associated transaction costs by ensuring timely access to quality certified seeds, ensuring optimal use of inputs and increasing labour productivity, particularly for smallholders.

Market Access and Child Labour: Survey Evidence from Rural Uganda

The study analyses the relationship between access to rural product markets and the extent and nature of child labour. It is built on the view that if physical markets can shape rural development through, for instance, influencing prices, household production decisions and employment, the associated activity growth could increase child labour. Using household survey data from Uganda, I find that children increase time in domestic work when local product markets are distant, while their time in economic activity declines. A similar pattern is observed for the incidence of child labour. The likelihood of child labour in domestic activity increases for each extra hour of travel to the market, while child labour in economic activity declines. This could reflect the possibility that households may switch child work from market-oriented activities to domestic work when they are remotely located from markets. Results confirm findings from earlier cross-country studies that access to product markets may be detrimental to children. Second, they demonstrate that the effect of the markets varies, depending on the age of children, as well as the nature of the work they engage in.

Retesting the Separability of China's Rural Households

AbstractThis article retests the separability of China's rural households in light of growing doubt about the sustainability of high economic growth in China. If a household's production decisions are “separable” from the household's consumption decisions, generally this suggests there is no surplus labor. Many scholars aver that China's surplus rural labor has spurred rapid economic growth, but concerns have arisen as to whether China still has surplus labor available. We investigate this issue using rural household panel data from 1993 to 2009 The regression results confirm that households in rural China have progressed from being non‐separable to separable. The estimation results for both the entire country and regions reject the separability hypothesis before 2004 but fail to reject the hypothesis after 2004 (with the exception of the central region). These results suggest that China's surplus labor supply is dwindling, especially in the eastern and the western regions. The sustainability of China's high economic growth is questionable in the absence of a large reservoir of surplus rural labor.

Are Household Production Decisions Cooperative? Evidence on Pastoral Migration and Milk Sales from Northern Kenya

Market‐based development efforts frequently create opportunities to generate income from goods previously produced and consumed within the household. Production within the household is often characterized by a gender and age division of labor. Market development efforts to improve well‐being may lead to unanticipated outcomes if household production decisions are noncooperative. We develop and test models of household decision making to investigate intrahousehold decision making in a nomadic pastoral setting from Kenya. Our results suggest that household decisions are contested, with husbands using migration decisions to resist wives' ability to market milk.

Institutional Constraints and Deforestation: An Application to Mexico

Following North (1990), this article hypothesizes that effective rural institutions may impose additional costs on tropical deforestation through agricultural conversion. This allows a formal agricultural household analysis of institutional constraints on deforestation and therefore a method of empirically testing whether there is any significant difference in the actual level of forest land conversion under institutional constraints compared to the level of conversion under pure open access. A dynamic panel analysis for agricultural planted area in Mexico at state level and over the 1960–85 period confirms that institutional constraints on land clearing affected deforestation during the pre‐NAFTA era.

WOMEN'S WORK AND MEN'S UNEMPLOYMENT

A large literature examines men's unemployment and their wives' labor-market participation. In response to her husband's unemployment, a woman may adjust her labor supplied to household production as well as to the market. This article tests for this effect and measures its impact using the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Cost of Living survey of 1917–1919. Households altered both household-production decisions and the wife's labor supplied to the market in response to the husband's unemployment. But the household-production-response effect was smaller than the added-worker effect, in terms of women's labor hours and household consumption.

When Nomads Settle: The Effects of Commoditization, Nutritional Change, and Formal Education on Ariaal and Rendille Pastoralists

When Nomads Settle: The Effects of Commoditization, Nutritional Change, and Formal Education on Ariaal and Rendille Pastoralists

Household Food Security, Farm Trees, and Agroforestry: A Comparative Study in Indonesia and the Philippines

Increasing numbers of studies suggest that farm trees and agroforestry practices improve household food security. Some have further speculated that poor farmers are responding to decreasing access to land and declining agricultural productivity by increasing farm tree and agroforestry activities because of the multiple benefits of trees, which are cash crops that demand relatively low levels of labor. This paper argues that the choice to cultivate trees, the decision as to which specific tree species are to be cultivated, and the determination of the spatial and temporal association of those trees with annual crops must all be evaluated on a historical and regional basis. Furthermore, in Southeast Asia. food security and upland farm decisions must be viewed within the broader context of the rice economy - the value people have for consuming rice, and its central position in household production decisions.

An Analysis of Shan Household Production Decisions

I briefly discuss the factors that enter into rice production among the Shan of northwestern Thailand. I then develop an analysis of production decisions based on the work of Chayanov. I discuss how other crops fit into the system and point out some further research questions which this analysis indicates.

The Value of Children: An Economic Perspective

It is postulated that parents respond to economic considerations in the children they bear and rear and that they equate the sacrifices and services expected in arriving at the value of children to them. Advances in economic analysis which make this analysis of population growth possible include: the theory of investment in human capital the treatment of human time in allocative decisions the household production function and a view of the family that encompasses both consumer choice and household production decisions including the bearing and rearing of children. In poorer countries children are very much capital. They require a great deal of care in the beginning and the rewards are wholly psychic but as the child becomes a teen-ager the cost is less and the rewards in the form of useful work are great. The concept of time as a factor in household production and the idea of household production itself show that a child does indeed contribute value to a home even though he is not gainfully employed. Other studies in this supplement elaborate these concepts. At the present time the therory lumps all the costs of the children at the beginning of the cycle and all the rewards at the end. It is thought that the process is a continuing one with varying values at each stage of the reproductive life cycle. Economic tools have great potential in explaining various demographic patterns. To be truly effective models will have to be developed for each stage of family life including the time childrearing days are over. Only thus will family planning personnel be able to see what results increased economic opportunity for women increased labor-saving devices and changes in contraceptive technology as well as infant mortality will have on untimate family investment in children.