By: William Hickman, Berber Kramer, Johanna Mollerstrom, and Greg Seymour
Agricultural development programs often aim to empower women by enhancing their control over income via new work opportunities, but as an unintended negative consequence, these programs can sometimes increase women's already heavy workloads. This raises the question of whether women themselves consider the increased control over income to be worth the additional work. To answer this, we need to know how much they value control over income and how much they value efforts to free up their time.
Cost-benefit analyses and impact evaluations of development programs often do not quantify these outcomes, likely because they are difficult to measure. The development of empowerment metrices such as the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) has yielded standardized measures for a program beneficiary’s current perceived level of control over income, and for their workload. However, these measures do not capture a beneficiary’s valuation of changes in levels of either.
With funding from the CGIAR GENDER Platform, we set out to develop and test a new measure using economic experiments. Over the course of the 2020/2021 growing season, we implemented a lab-in-the-field experiment with 500 couples (1,000 respondents) from four cooperatives spread across rural Rwanda. The experiment was designed to elicit men’s and women’s valuations of control over income, time, and trade-offs between them.
To measure respondents’ valuation for control over income, we provided them with a series of incentivized choices between:
- Receiving RWF 2,500 (US$ 2.50) via their spouse
- Receiving a lower amount, but directly into their own hands.
The amount that respondents sacrificed to be paid directly is interpreted as their valuation of control over income.
Likewise, to measure respondents’ valuation for freeing up time, we presented a series of incentivized choices between:
- Receiving RWF 2,500
- Receiving a lower amount plus one day of labor.
If option B was selected, the project would arrange and pay for a day of labor to help respondents work in the fields and free up time.
Photo credit: Emerence Mukangabo, hired labor at work, Gatsibo district 2021.
Valuations of control over income, or changes in workload, may vary throughout the season, for example depending on respondents’ time-varying liquidity needs and workloads. Therefore, we repeated this experiment with the same respondents at 4 different stages of the growing season. We also varied whether payments were made in cash or in-kind (in the form of soap), since respondents might be less concerned about their spouse taking control of resources received in-kind.
The experiment captured several important patterns. First, we find that women were willing to sacrifice more household income to increase their control over income than their husbands. However, the magnitude of their sacrifice (i.e., their willingness to pay for control over income) is lower than we had anticipated. The average woman was willing to pay only 56 RWF (or US$ 0.06) out of her 2500 RWF (US$ 2.50) to receive the payment herself. Second, we find that both men’s and women’s valuation of control over income is, unsurprisingly, highest when paid in cash. This likely reflects the greater variety of ways in which cash can be used, compared to resources received in-kind. Third, respondents’ valuations of control over income increased over the course of the experiment. Participants may not have been satisfied with how spouses used their cash income in previous waves, thereby increasing their valuation of control over income in subsequent waves.
Figure 1: Willingness to pay for control over income by gender and wave
Source: Authors’, lab-in-the-field experiment data
Note: WTP=willingness to pay
On the other hand, both women and men placed a high value on changes in time use, and there is no significant gender difference in this valuation. Men and women sacrificed an average of RWF 580 (US$ .58) out of their RWF 2,500 for us to arrange one day of labor for them (thereby freeing up respondents’ own time). This pattern occurred regardless of whether the remaining payment, after subtracting the cost of labor, was made in cash or in-kind, and regardless of whether it was paid to respondents themselves or their spouses.
Figure 2: Willingness to pay to free up time by gender and wave
Source: Authors’, lab-in-the-field experiment data
Note: WTP=willingness to pay
To put these findings in perspective, suppose that a program offers a new work opportunity to women. Income from the program is paid directly to women but requires them to spend more time working. The cost of an extra day of work, based on the valuations we observed in our experiment, would be RWF 580. The benefit from the increased control over income would be RWF 56 for every RWF 2500, so 2.24%. This means that women’s incomes would need to increase by at least 580/1.0224 = RWF 567 per extra day worked for the program to actually constitute a net benefit to them, considering the trade-off between increasing control over income and workload. To put this into context, according to the 2021 Rwanda Labor Force Survey, the average monthly income from working in agriculture was around RWF 21,215, or RWF 884 per day if assuming a month has 24 working days; and based on survey data administered at the time of the lab-in-the-field experiment, participants paid on average RWF 1,201 per day of labor. Thus, the minimum increase in women’s incomes at which the program constitutes a net benefit to them (RWF 567 per extra day worked) is still well below average agricultural incomes. An important question, though, is whether women have enough free time available to actually realize these gains.
In addition to the lab-in-the-field experiment, we conducted semi-structured interviews with respondents to learn more about their decisions and time constraints. Based on these interviews, it seems like respondents did not forgo income to accrue leisure time. Rather, respondents viewed freeing up time as a way to take on new economic opportunities, and further increase incomes. Consequently, agricultural development programs introducing time-saving practices, technologies, and services may have more positive welfare impacts than programs that primarily increase control over monetary resources.
On December 19th, we shared these findings with Rwanda’s Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources (MINAGRI). We validated the results with them and discussed implications for agricultural development programs. It was clear that the benefits of reducing the currently high workloads in rural areas have been receiving too little attention by the agriculture community, and have perhaps been undervalued. Thus, more work is needed to help farmers reduce their workloads on the farm for them to be able to take on other productive opportunities.
About the Authors
Berber Kramer is a Senior Research Fellow in IFPRI’s Markets, Trade, and Institutions Division.
Johanna Mollerstrom is an Associate Professor of Economics at the Interdisciplinary Center for Economics Science (ICES) and the Economics Department at George Mason University in Arlington, VA.
William Hickman is a 3rd-year PhD candidate in the Economics PhD program at George Mason University and the Interdisciplinary Center for Economic Science.
Greg Seymour is a Research Fellow in IFPRI’s Environment, Production and Technology Division
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