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on Development |
| By: | Kramer, Berber; Cecchi, Francesco; Levine, Madison |
| Abstract: | As climate variability intensifies, smallholder households—especially women within those households—face growing exposure to weather-related shocks, increasing their vulnerability to uncompensated losses and consumption shortfalls. Index insurance has emerged as a scalable risk management tool, yet basis risk, i.e., the gap between farm-level losses and index-triggered payouts, undermines trust, limits insurance demand, and constrains impacts on well-being especially among women. To understand the gendered impacts of reducing basis risk, we ask whether uncompensated shocks resulting from basis risk might affect women more than men, by analyzing gender differences in coping with shocks. Female farmers have lower education levels, less land, lower food consumption scores, and less agency in decisions over household coping responses than male farmers. Shocks—especially damage to standing crops and illnesses within the household—are associated with a greater reduction in food consumption scores among women than among men. These descriptive patterns suggest that basis risk has more severe implications for women than men, offering an explanation for why lowering basis risk improves insurance demand and perceptions particularly among women farmers. |
| Keywords: | Labor and Human Capital |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea26:404785 |
| By: | Kirui, Oliver K.; Olanrewaju, Opeyemi; Bamiwuye, Temilolu; Popoola, Olufemi; Nwagboso, Chibuzo |
| Abstract: | he gender asset-ownership gap remains a persistent barrier to inclusive economic growth. While women contribute significantly to agricultural production and household welfare, they continue to face constraints in accessing and controlling productive assets such as land and non-land resources. Using nationally representative panel data from the Nigeria Living Standards Measurement Study-Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) waves 4 and 5, this study examines the role of women’s productive asset ownership and empowerment in shaping household income inequality in rural Nigeria. Descriptive evidence shows persistently high intrahousehold inequality, with intrahousehold Gini coefficients averaging approximately 0.70 across survey rounds, despite a modest decline between 2018/19 and 2023/24. Regional patterns reveal particularly pronounced inequality in the North East, where income distributions are heavily skewed and most households exhibit extreme intrahousehold disparities. Employing fixed effects regressions and Blinder-Oaxaca decompositions, the analysis yields three key findings. First, women’s land share is associated with reduced intrahousehold income inequality, but this effect is modest and conditional. It becomes meaningful primarily in households where women control more than half of total household farmland, suggesting that small and fragmented landholdings offer limited inequality-reducing potential on their own. Women’s control over income and participation in agricultural decision-making emerge as additional and consistently significant drivers of reduced intrahousehold inequality. Second, women’s land share has a significant and positive effect on women’s income share, with a 10 percentage point increase in female-managed farmland associated with approximately a 0.76 percentage point increase in women’s share of household income; women’s income control and agricultural decision-making further amplify this effect. Third, Blinder-Oaxaca decompositions reveal that households where women own productive assets have significantly lower intrahousehold inequality and higher women’s income shares than those where no woman owns an asset, with differences driven primarily by disparities in women’s income control and decision-making authority rather than asset ownership alone. This shifts the policy debate from simply closing gender asset gaps to ensuring women’s assets are productive and consolidated with genuine economic agency. |
| Keywords: | gender; women; assets; inequality; gender inequality; household income; income distribution; households; Nigeria; Africa; Sub-Saharan Africa |
| Date: | 2026–06–17 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fpr:ifprid:183394 |
| By: | Alfano, Marco (University of Southampton); Goerlach, Joseph-Simon (Bocconi University) |
| Abstract: | Accounting for multiple responses to weather shocks drastically changes policy implications for adaptation to increasingly variable weather. Kenyan households react to temperature anomalies by sending migrants, by transiting to less climate-sensitive occupations, and by changing livestock species. Evidence suggests these are short-term adjustments, which respond significantly to common interventions. Randomised income transfers cushion consumption losses and decrease adaptation pressure, such as migration. Better infrastructure, instead, eases occupational transitions, reducing alternative adjustments, including migration and livestock composition. A model of joint migration, occupation, and livestock choices reveals long-term effects of these short-term shocks. Transitions to non-agriculture first act as a substitute for migration and subsequently as a stepping stone for later migration. |
| Keywords: | migration, weather shocks, coping strategies, development policies |
| JEL: | J61 O15 R23 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18857 |
| By: | Coulibaly, Salifou K.; McNamara, Paul |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes the nonlinear and stage-specific impacts of rainfall variability on cocoa yields in Côte d’Ivoire, the world’s leading cocoa producer. We combine a georeferenced Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) dataset (1981–2025) with farm-level survey data collected during two contrasting climate years: a drought year (2022) and a near-optimal year (2023). Results reveal three key findings. First, the rainfall–yield relationship is highly nonlinear, exhibiting both Ushaped and inverted U-shaped patterns across seasons, suggesting that linear specifications may misestimate climate impacts. Second, climate sensitivity varies by production stage and baseline conditions: moisture availability during the growing season is the primary constraint under drought, while pre-season water recharge becomes more critical in wetter conditions. Third, climate effects are asymmetric, with yield losses from moisture deficits exceeding gains under favorable rainfall, indicating substantial downside risk for farmers operating near optimal conditions. Herbicide expenditure per hectare positively affects yields in the favorable year, underscoring the importance of weed management, while plantation age is negatively associated with productivity, consistent with declining yields in older cocoa stands. |
| Keywords: | International Development |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea26:404652 |
| By: | Abate, Gashaw T.; Mugabo, Serge; Raghunathan, Kalyani; Van Campenhout, Bjorn |
| Abstract: | Smallholder farmers in low-income countries often operate in fragmented markets characterized by volatile prices, weak bargaining power, and limited incentives to invest in productivity and quality. Large institutional buyers procuring locally can reshape these conditions by creating structured demand and embedding sourcing requirements in contracts with intermediaries, potentially transmitting incentives upstream to farmers. This study evaluates a maize procurement policy introduced in 2021 by a major institutional buyer in Uganda that required its large trader-aggregator suppliers to source at least 20 percent of deliveries directly from smallholder farmers through “indirect conditional contracting.” Using survey data collected in 2024 from nearly 1, 300 smallholder farmers and nearly 300 aggregators across six districts, we estimate effects on prices, technology adoption, quality upgrading, welfare, and resilience. Intent-to-treat (ITT) estimates show that residing in areas where the major buyer operates is associated with 5–6 percent higher farmgate prices on average, with instrumental variable (IV) estimates suggesting upper bound premiums of up to 45 percent. Farmers in the conditional contract group earn positive net returns and increase adoption of improved inputs and postharvest practices. Intermediary aggregators receive about 7 (ITT) to 30 (IV) percent lower selling prices but increase adoption of postharvest quality practices. Mediation analysis indicates that gains for farmers arise primarily through increased competition between intermediaries. However, downstream welfare outcomes remain inconclusive, with suggestive evidence that non-participating farmers in treatment areas may face lower prices due to market segmentation. Overall, our findings show that indirect conditional contracts can reshape value chain incentives by attracting intermediaries, increasing competition, and stimulating upstream investment, even as they generate uneven distributional effects. |
| Keywords: | food aid; smallholders; value chains; food assistance; maize; markets; Uganda; Africa; Sub-Saharan Africa |
| Date: | 2026–06–17 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fpr:ifprid:183400 |
| By: | Olanrewaju, Opeyemi; Kirui, Oliver K.; Popoola, Olufemi; Bamiwuye, Temilolu; Nwagboso, Chibuzo; Fasoranti, Adetunji |
| Abstract: | Land tenure security is widely regarded as essential for agricultural investment and productivity growth. However, causal evidence on its effects across multiple farm decisions remains limited, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. This study investigates how tenure security is associated with crop portfolio choices and input investment decisions among smallholder farmers in rural Nigeria. It measures tenure security using a composite index, drawn from wave 5 of the Nigeria Living Standards Measurement Study-Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA), that captures plot-level perceived security of ownership, and household reported risk of land loss, ownership security, and duration of ownership. The study employs two complementary approaches: a multivariate probit model to capture the joint and correlated nature of crop adoption decisions, and limited information maximum likelihood instrumental variables (LIML-IV) estimation to establish association between land tenure and input investment decisions. Results reveal significant but heterogeneous effects. Greater tenure security increases the probability of cultivating grains and cereals by 29.8 percentage points, while reducing the likelihood of growing legumes and pulses by 24.6 percentage points and horticulture by 11.4 percentage points respectively, which suggests a substitution effect toward grain specialization. On input investments, LIML-IV estimates indicate that a one-unit increase in the tenure security index raises organic fertilizer use by 9.93 percent, inorganic fertilizer use by 6.57 percent, and pesticide use by approximately 0.89 percent. These findings are robust to Lewbel’s heteroskedasticity-based identification strategy. Heterogeneity analysis reveals stronger investment effects among youth-headed households, while impacts on female-managed plots are statistically insignificant, pointing to persistent gender barriers. The study highlights the need for integrated policies that combine tenure formalization with crop diversification support, gender- and youth-sensitive land governance, and input market development in order to maximize the productivity gains from land rights reform in Nigeria. |
| Keywords: | land tenure; tenure security; property rights; farm inputs; statistics; land ownership; investment; Nigeria; Africa; Western Africa; Sub-Saharan Africa |
| Date: | 2026–06–26 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fpr:ifprid:183522 |
| By: | Rakesh Banerjee (University of Exeter Business School); Tushar Bharati (Department of Economics, University of Western Australia); Swami Jishnurupananda (Ramakrishna Mission Vidyamandira, Howrah, India) |
| Abstract: | We study the relationship between capital intensification and female employment outcomes. Using panel data on more than 25, 000 manufacturing firms across over $100$ countries, we document a robust empirical regularity: as firms become more capital intensive, they employ fewer female workers and more male workers. We further substantiate this relationship using a natural experiment that exogenously altered establishments' access to capital. Exploiting changes to Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) regulations in India during the 2000's and combining them with more than 15 years of data from the Annual Survey of Industries, we find that the liberalization of FDI rules led to substantial increases in capital intensity and male employment but declines in female employment and the female wage bill. |
| Keywords: | foreign direct investment, capital intensifcation, U-shaped female labor force participation |
| JEL: | J3 J4 O1 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uwa:wpaper:26-05 |
| By: | Liu, Xufeng |
| Abstract: | Labor markets in developing countries are marked by high informality, self-employment, and strong ties to agriculture, yet evidence on short-term job dynamics remains scarce. This paper provides the first nationally representative estimates of within-year labor market transitions in Sub-Saharan Africa and examines how they interact with agricultural cycles and household welfare. Using ten rounds of panel data from the Nigeria General Household Survey (2010–2024), I construct quarterly transition rates across employment types and household non-farm enterprise (HNFE) job flows. The Nigerian labor market is highly fl uid: only 77 percent of workers remain in the same job each quarter, with farm–non-farm switches dominating job-to-job transitions. HNFEs display quarterly job creation and destruction rates around 15–16 percent, mostly reflecting household entry and e xit. Smaller HNFEs grow faster, rejecting Gibrat’s Law and suggesting binding early-stage frictions. Employment and enterprise outcomes move in sync with the agricultural cycle—post-harvest periods expand non-farm activity despite lower productivity, while shocks shift labor back to farming. Together, the findings reveal a mobile but weakly productive labor market and argue against one-size-fits-all entrepreneurship policies, underscoring the value of targeted, timely interventions aligned with seasonal agricultural rhythms. |
| Keywords: | International Development |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea26:404638 |
| By: | Donald, Aletheia Amalia; Tafere, Kibrom |
| Abstract: | This paper synthesizes country-level decomposition evidence on the gender gap in agricultural productivity across Sub-Saharan Africa, identifying its major drivers and reviewing what works to close it. Gender productivity gaps range between 7 percent and 77 percent across twelve African countries, with male-managed plots yielding higher outputs than those managed by women. Although controlling for the characteristics of farmers, households and plots tends to shrink this gap, a conditional gap of 4 percent to 62 percent persists. The literature also documents an overall gender gap in agricultural production in the range of 18 percent to 61 percent. The largest driver of these gaps is women’s concentration in lower-value crops, followed by their lower use of and returns from labor. Social norms and access to land and financial resources play a crucial role in sustaining and exacerbating these gender disparities. Evidence suggests that targeted programmatic approaches to increasing women’s adoption of cash crops, enhancing their use of labor and other inputs and providing them with tailored skills and information can help close the gender gap in agricultural productivity. |
| Date: | 2026–06–24 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:11414 |
| By: | Leight, Jessica; Gilligan, Daniel O.; Mulford, Michael; Zafar, Sarim |
| Abstract: | What is the optimal timing for a cash transfer targeting increased secondary school enrollment? We present evidence from a randomized trial in rural Ethiopia showing a CCT increases enrollment and reduces child marriage. The largest effects are observed for youth offered the transfer a year prior to their (potential) matriculation; in this cohort, there is also a significant in-crease in the probability students pass the primary school leaving exam. By contrast, reduced treatment effects are observed for prior dropouts, and a generalized random forest analysis suggests this primarily reflects different observable characteristics (lower academic performance) among this sub-sample. |
| Keywords: | cash transfers; social protection; education; youth; secondary education; Ethiopia; Africa; Sub-Saharan Africa; Eastern Africa |
| Date: | 2026–06–16 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fpr:ifprid:183379 |
| By: | Shen Shen (Keio University); Hiroyuki Yamada (Keio University) |
| Abstract: | A stable and accessible power supply is pivotal for economic growth and development. We study the impact of nationwide residential electrification in Cambodia on sectoral employment. Leveraging annual village-level administrative data from 2013 to 2021, we estimate the employment effects of electrification using a novel difference-in-differences estimator designed to accommodate staggered adoption and treatment-effect heterogeneity across groups and over time. In our preferred specification, electrification reduced agricultural employment by around 2.4 percentage points in the long run but raised service employment by only 1.5 percentage points; the agriculture-to-services transition was also more pronounced among working-age women. The magnitude of these estimates is substantially smaller than those reported in earlier studies, consistent with a pattern of premature deindustrialisation in which electrification induces only limited structural transformation. The modest inter-sectoral shift in labour appears to operate through a mix of channels, including agricultural productivity, labour demand, investment in human capital, and migration, although the contribution of each channel, considered in isolation, is minor. Our findings highlight that agrarian workers who detach from the labour market may not necessarily re-enter it when complementary markets and demand are absent. We further underscore the importance of comparing model estimates across alternative constructions of the treatment variable, as the novel estimator we employ permits continuous, discrete, or binary treatments. |
| Keywords: | Electrification; Sectoral Employment; Labour Reallocation; Premature Deindustrialisation; Cambodia |
| JEL: | O22 O14 J21 O53 |
| Date: | 2026–07–23 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:keo:dpaper:dp2026-016 |
| By: | Bishop, Menna (University of Warwick); Moneke, Niclas (University of Oxford); Zipfel, Céline (House of Sustainable Society (HoSS)) |
| Abstract: | Towns and cities create jobs and income. Can the arrival of new jobs also create a town? We study large agro-industrial labour demand shocks in rural sub-Saharan Africa: flower farms in Kenya. Rising production costs in Europe generate a boom in Kenyan cut-flower export production, providing stable wage jobs for mostly low-skilled women. We exploit the specific requirements of cut-flower production to track the arrival and growth of greenhouses over the last two decades. We find large increases in wage employment and home-to-market transformation within agriculture, especially for women. Urbanisation unfolds: population growth and in-migration are flanked by an emerging private rental market for housing. Housing quality and infrastructure access improve, wealth accumulates. Educational investments increase while fertility decreases. Suggestive evidence highlights that the resulting towns initiate occupational change, motivate forward-looking investment and even survive flower farm closures – indicating towns that can sustain themselves as centres of economic activity. |
| Keywords: | Town formation; wage employment; agro-industry; Kenya |
| JEL: | J21 O14 O18 Q13 R11 |
| Date: | 2026–08–16 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:hamisu:2026_004 |
| By: | Lee Crawfurd (Center for Global Development) |
| Abstract: | How many children in low- and middle-income countries attend school near sources of pollution? We match the locations of 2.6 million schools across 17 countries to 11, 301 documented toxic sites and find that 9.7 percent of schools in our sample lie within 5 km of a site. Weighting by enrollment, 12.7 percent of students in the 7 countries with enrollment data attend a school within this distance. These remain lower bounds: the available data capture only a fraction of actual contaminated sites. Proximity is overwhelmingly an urban phenomenon—urban schools are 4 to 28 times more likely than rural schools to be near a site, depending on the country. Within countries, schools in the wealthiest neighborhood quintile are about 14 times more likely to be near a site than schools in the poorest (34.5 percent versus 2.4 percent), reflecting the spatial concentration of industry in wealthier urban areas of LMICs. Where data on school management are available, private schools are also more likely than public schools to be near sites in all eight such countries. |
| Keywords: | pollution, schools, environmental justice, lead, low- and middle-income countries |
| JEL: | Q53 I25 O15 R14 |
| Date: | 2026–06–13 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cgd:wpaper:749 |
| By: | Ekaba, Michael; Purushotham, Anjali; Cramon-Taubadel, Stephan von |
| Abstract: | Urbanisation in low- and middle-income countries has created complex transformations in food environments. Particularly in the space between rural and urban areas, food environments, occupation structures, lifestyles, and dietary patterns undergo constant changes with important implications for nutrition and health. We study one such rural-urban interface around Bangalore city in South India, estimating how households’ interactions with different food sources are associated with women’s dietary diversity and anthropometric outcomes. The results show that households’ interaction with diverse food acquisition pathways, irrespective of their nutritional orientation, is associated with higher dietary diversity among women. However, greater diversity in food acquisition pathways can also increase exposure to modern and convenience-oriented food outlets. The processed and packaged foods offered by these outlets present potential long-term metabolic health risks. However, we find no evidence of these implications in the rural-urban interface of Bangalore, as household interaction with diverse food acquisition pathways is not associated with changes in body mass index and overweight/obesity prevalence. Instead, anthropometric outcomes are strongly associated with changes in demographic and socioeconomic factors. Overall, our findings suggest that urbanisation does not replace traditional food sources with modern outlets but rather creates a hybrid food environment that provides households with more options to make healthy but also less healthy nutritional choices. Policies aimed at improving consumer nutritional knowledge can increase the prevalence of healthy choices and thus ensure that interaction with diverse food sources increases dietary diversity without leading to long-term metabolic health risks. |
| Keywords: | Agricultural and Food Policy, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Consumer/Household Economics, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety |
| Date: | 2026–08–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:gausfs:410131 |