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European Association of Agricultural Economists >
2008 International Congress, August 26-29, 2008, Ghent, Belgium >
Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:
http://purl.umn.edu/43609
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| Title: | One size fits all? Female Headed Households, Income Risk, and Access to Resources |
| Authors: | Seebens, Holger |
| Keywords: | Female headed households
tenure insecurity
income risk |
| Issue Date: | 2008 |
| Abstract: | Studies dealing with productivity in female
(FHH) and male headed households (MHH) find that
FHH appear to be either less, equally, or more
productive compared to MHH. Lower productivity of
FHH is often explained by insecure access to land, while
the findings of higher productivity largely remain
unexplained. This paper is an attempt to reconcile these
contrasting findings by constructing a model that
accounts for productivity effects arising from secure
land rights and the risk of falling short of income. Both
affect productivity, but they do so in opposite directions.
While tenure insecurity tends to decrease labor effort, income risks increase it as subsistence farmers want to avoid falling (deeper) into poverty. Depending on which of these risks prevails in the perception of farmers, they become either more or less productive than a benchmark farmer who faces none of these constraints. The model is tested using data from Kenya where FHH are categorized by different land tenure security schemes. The results from a stochastic cost frontier model establish that FHH facing tenure insecurity are less productive compared to MHH. However, this result only obtains in case households do not face income risks. |
| URI: | http://purl.umn.edu/43609 |
| Institution/Association: | European Association of Agricultural Economists>2008 International Congress, August 26-29, 2008, Ghent, Belgium |
| Total Pages: | 15 |
| Collections: | 2008 International Congress, August 26-29, 2008, Ghent, Belgium
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| 063.pdf | | 171Kb | PDF | View/Open |
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