Not Your Average Job: Measuring Farm Labor in Tanzania: Policy Brief No. 6

The extent of bias in smallholder farm labor data is examined by conducting a randomized survey experiment amongst farming households

• From: Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
• Published: 12 January 2017

• Country: Tanzania
• Document Type: Briefing
• Theme: Economic Growth
• Authors: Arthi, V, Beegle, K, De Weerdt, J, Palacios-Lopez, A

Abstract

The extent of bias in smallholder farm labor data is examined by conducting a randomized survey experiment amongst farming households in rural Tanzania. Benchmark agricultural labor estimates obtained from weekly surveys are compared to those from a traditional single end-of-season recall survey. Traditional recall-style modules overestimate hours worked per person per plot by a factor of 3.4. This recall bias is driven by the mental burdens of reporting on highly variable agricultural work patterns. All things equal, studies suffering from this bias would understate agricultural labor productivity.

This research is part of the Gender, Growth and Labour Markets in Low-Income Countries programme

Citation

Vellore Arthi, Kathleen Beegle, Joachim De Weerdt, Amparo Palacios-Lopez (2017). Not Your Average Job: Measuring Farm Labor in Tanzania. GLMLIC Policy Brief No. 6. Available at: https://g2lm lic.iza.org/publications/pb/pb6/

Link

Not Your Average Job: Measuring Farm Labor in Tanzania

Published 12 January 2017