Publication: Caught in a Productivity Trap: A Distributional Perspective on Gender Differences in Malawian Agriculture
Date
2013-03
ISSN
Published
2013-03
Author(s)
Abstract
In targeting poverty gains, sub-Saharan
African governments have emphasized the alleviation of
gender differences in agricultural productivity. The
empirical studies on the gender gap, however, have
frequently used data that were limited regarding geographic
and topical coverage, and/or details on intra-household
dynamics. The study provides a nationally-representative
analysis of the gender gap in Malawi, and decomposes it, for
the first time, at the mean and at selected points of the
agricultural productivity distribution into (i) a portion
driven by gender differences in levels of observable
attributes (the endowment effect), and (ii) a portion driven
by gender differences in returns to the same set of
observables (the structure effect). Sequentially, the
authors unpack the relative contributions of different
factors towards the gender gap, and suggest future research
priorities to inform policy interventions. The authors find
that while female-managed plots are, on average, 25 percent
less productive, 82 percent of this differential is
explained by differences in endowments, mainly due to
high-value crop cultivation and levels of household adult
male labor inputs. The factors driving the structure effect
include child dependency ratio and effectiveness of
household adult male labor and inorganic fertilizer. The
gender gap increases across the productivity distribution,
ranging from 22 percent at the 10th percentile to 37 percent
at the 90th percentile. While it is explained predominantly
by the endowment effect in the first half of the
distribution, the contribution of the structure effect
towards the gender gap increases steadily above the median,
standing at 34 percent at the 90th percentile.
Citation
“Kilic, Talip; Palacios-Lopez, Amparo; Goldstein, Markus. 2013. Caught in a Productivity Trap: A Distributional Perspective on Gender Differences in Malawian Agriculture. Policy Research Working Paper;No. 6381. © World Bank, Washington, DC. http://openknowledge.worldbank.org/entities/publication/d825087c-03a6-5eca-9ae2-01a24c1b21f2 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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