Essays On Intrahousehold Allocation Decisions

Author : Tomoe Anne Yamashiro Bourdier
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (912 download)

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Download or read book Essays on the Economics of Agriculture and Nutrition written by Tomoe Anne Yamashiro Bourdier and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation adds to our understanding of the links between agriculture and food and nutrition security. In particular, I examine the economic activities and decisions that take place within households and determine how resources are allocated to individual members. Can the intrahousehold division of responsibilities over food consumption and marketing decisions limit opportunities for consumption smoothing via the storage of own-produced crops? In Chapter 1, using a non-unitary model in which one agent controls production decisions, market sales and purchases, and another makes daily food consumption decisions on behalf of the household, I identify two types of household inefficiencies that may occur when the two agents have diverging individual preferences and fail to cooperate: 1) net income losses from selling crops after harvest and purchasing again from the market when prices are higher; and 2) imperfect inter-temporal consumption smoothing, which may leave both agents worse off. To test these predictions, I conduct a series of incentivized experimental games in farm households of Bihar, India and combine experimental measures of individual preferences and intrahousehold cooperation over pulse stock management with survey data on the household's agricultural production and food consumption decisions. Analysis of the experiments suggests that women have higher marginal valuation of pulses than their male partner and that households incur larger losses when men make the final decision in a sequential bargaining game. However, I find no conclusive evidence that cooperation failure in the intrahousehold bargaining games predicts observed inefficiencies in food consumption smoothing and market participation. Heterogeneity analysis provides suggestive evidence that shortages in pulse consumption below average levels are greater in households where the female participant has a stronger preference for pulses, consistent with the theory. The extent to which agricultural policies can improve the nutrition and welfare of farm households depends crucially on our understanding of how these households adjust their consumption decisions in response to external shifters of production. In Chapter 2, leveraging experimental variation in pulse production generated by an agricultural extension program in Bihar, India, I examine the impact of increased production of nutritious foods on household consumption and individual nutrient intake. I find that the intervention induced the adoption of pulse cultivation and, consequently, a modest increase in pulse production. While treatment did not lead to a measurable change in household-level measures of pulse consumption or protein availability, the protein intake of the female respondent showed a small increase. Overall, I do not find evidence that increased pulse production results in increased pulse consumption, and therefore fail to reject the hypothesis of separability. Treatment effects on production outcomes were stronger in wealthier households and when women in charge of cooking were also involved in decisions related to agricultural production and food expenditures. Effects on consumption outcomes were also heterogeneous, as the female respondent's protein intake was more likely to increase if she valued pulses more than male members of her household did. In polygynous households (in which a man is married to several women), complex dynamics among spouses and their respective children shape how farm households cope with weather and other shocks. In Chapter 3, using the Feed the Future Ghana Population Survey data, I investigate how women's bargaining power may mediate the relationship between polygyny and children's nutrition in rural households. The results suggest that polygyny is associated with low weight-for-height z-scores in children under the age of five but reveal no such relationship with height-for-age or weight-for age z-scores. I find evidence that women's empowerment in agriculture may affect child nutritional status and diet quality differentially in polygynous households and monogamous households with different dimensions of empowerment having different impacts on specific child nutrition outcomes. Among polygynous households, several empowerment indicators appear to be positively correlated with height-for-age z-scores, indicative of long-term nutritional health, but negatively correlated with weight-for-height z-scores, typically linked with acute weight loss. Finally, children of senior co-wives are more likely to be exclusively breastfed until 6 months. They also present higher height-for-age z-scores and lower weight-for-height z-scores. There is no significant correlation between a mother's rank and the feeding practices of her children between 6 and 23 months old.