Not Your Average Job : Measuring Farm Labor in Tanzania
A good understanding of the constraints on agricultural growth in Africa relies on the accurate measurement of smallholder labor. Yet, serious weaknesses in these statistics persist. The extent of bias in smallholder labor data is examined by condu...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
|---|---|
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2016
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2016/07/26610928/not-your-average-job-measuring-farm-labor-tanzania http://hdl.handle.net/10986/24854 |
| Summary: | A good understanding of the constraints
on agricultural growth in Africa relies on the accurate
measurement of smallholder labor. Yet, serious weaknesses in
these statistics persist. The extent of bias in smallholder
labor data is examined by conducting a randomized survey
experiment among farming households in rural Tanzania.
Agricultural labor estimates obtained through weekly surveys
are compared with the results of reporting in a single
end-of-season recall survey. The findings show strong
evidence of recall bias: people in traditional recall-style
modules report working up to four times as many hours per
person-plot relative to those reporting labor on a weekly
basis. If hours are aggregated to the household level,
however, this discrepancy disappears, a factor driven by the
underreporting by recall households of people and plots
active in agricultural work. The evidence suggests that
these competing forms of recall bias are driven not only by
failures in memory, but also by the mental burdens of
reporting on highly variable agricultural work patterns to
provide a typical estimate. All things equal, studies
suffering from this bias would understate agricultural labor productivity. |
|---|