Technological change in production processes with gendered division of labor across tasks, such as agriculture, can have a differential impact on women's and men's labor. Using exogenous variation in the extent of loamy soil, which is more amenable to deep tillage than clayey soil and therefore more likely to see adoption of tractor-driven equipment for primary tilling, we show that mechanization led to significantly greater decline in women's than men's labor on Indian farms during 1999–2011. Reduced demand for labor in weeding, a task often undertaken by women, explains our findings.

Technological change in production processes with gendered division of labor across tasks, such as agriculture, can have a differential impact on women's and men's labor. Using exogenous variation in the extent of loamy soil, which is more amenable to deep tillage than clayey soil and therefore more likely to see adoption of tractor-driven equipment for primary tilling, we show that mechanization led to significantly greater decline in women's than men's labor on Indian farms during 1999–2011. Reduced demand for labor in weeding, a task often undertaken by women, explains our findings.

Previous studies of poverty in developing countries have to a great extent focussed on the characteristics of the household head and used these as proxies for the underlying ability of the household to generate income. This paper uses five rounds of panel data to investigate the persistence of poverty in urban Ethiopia, with a particular focus on the role of intra-household heterogeneity in occupations.

We use three rounds of a rich panel data set to investigate the determinants of household cooking fuel choice and energy transition in urban Ethiopia. We observe that the expected energy transition did not occur following economic growth in Ethiopia during the decade 2000–2009. Regression results from a random effects multinomial logit model, which controls for unobserved household heterogeneity, show that households' economic status, price of alternative energy sources, and education are important determinants of fuel choice in urban Ethiopia.

AbstractThis article contributes to a growing body of empirical literature relating credit constraints and incomplete insurance to investment decisions. We use panel data from rural Ethiopia to investigate whether participation in a safety net program enhances fertilizer adoption. Using a difference‐in‐differences estimator and inverse propensity score weighting, we find that participation in Ethiopia's food‐for‐work (FFW) program increased fertilizer adoption in the short run, but not in the long run.

We investigate the effect of international remittances from migrated family members on informal interhousehold transfers—an issue that has received limited attention in the literature. Using rich panel data from urban Ethiopia spanning 15 years, we show that receiving international remittances increases the value of private domestic interhousehold transfers, whereas receiving domestic remittances does not have any effect. We also show that the transfers sent respond to shocks to a great extent.

Abstract

AbstractHow does income uncertainty affect individual well‐being? Combining individual‐level panel data from rural Ethiopia with high‐resolution meteorological data, we estimate that mean‐preserving increases in rainfall variability are associated with reductions in objective consumption and subjective well‐being. Mediation analysis suggests that the estimated reduction in consumption does not fully explain the total effect on individual well‐being. Increased rainfall variability also has a large direct effect on individual well‐being.