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In their productive capacity, assets generate income and facilitate access to capital and credit. In the face of shocks, they enhance the ability to diversify income and alleviate liquidity constraints (Hulme and Shepherd, 2003; Carter and Barrett, 2006). Ownership of, and control over assets is a key input into individual empowerment and the related micro data constitute an essential input into extensive economic research focused on intra-household bargaining outcomes and their impact on household and individual welfare. Underlying these sub-optimal approaches to individual level data collection, in particular the use of proxy respondents that overlooks information asymmetries within households, is the lack of technical guidelines on questionnaire design and respondent selection protocols that properly capture individual-level ownership of, and rights to assets. In a world of imperfect and scarce data, the absence of these recommended practices fuels the prevalence of myths regarding women's asset ownership and contributes to the inability to clearly articulate policy responses to inequalities faced by women and men (Doss and others, 2015). The provision of these guidelines, anchored in solid methodological research, would in turn improve the collection of household survey data facilitating better socioeconomic research focused on personal wealth and its distribution. The MEXA design was informed by the recommendations of the EDGE Follow-up Meeting on Measuring Asset Ownership from a Gender Perspective that was held on November 21-22, 2013 with participation from the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD), the UN Women, World Bank, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), UBOS and Yale University. A review of the survey instruments and protocols linked to the Gender Asset Gap Project, Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI), Demographic and Health Surveys, and Living Standards Measurement Study - Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) initiative was important for distilling the prominent approaches to respondent selection in household surveys across the developing world.

Gender --- Gender and Rural Development --- Law and Development --- Living Standards --- Poverty Reduction

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Agricultural labor accounts for the largest share of child labor worldwide. Yet, measurement of farm labor statistics is challenging due to its inherent seasonality, variable and irregular work schedules, and the varying saliences of individuals' work activities. The problem is further complicated by the presence of widespread gender stratification of work and social lives. This study reports the findings of three randomized survey design interventions over the agricultural coffee calendar in rural Ethiopia to address whether response by proxy rather than self-report has effects on the measurement of child labor statistics within and across seasons. While the estimates do not report differences for boys across all seasons, the analysis shows sizable self/proxy discrepancies in child labor statistics for girls. Overall, the results highlight concerns on the use of survey proxy respondents in agricultural labor, particularly for girls. The main findings have important implications for policymakers about data collection in rural areas in developing countries.

Child Labor --- Farm Labor --- Gender and Rural Development --- Labor Markets --- Labor Policies --- Labor Statistics --- Rural Labor Markets --- Seasonality --- Survey Design

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Male outmigration, the globalization of agri-food systems, conflict, and pandemic human disease have all been linked to changes in rural economies, changes in women's roles in the agricultural sector, and consequently to assertions that agriculture is "feminizing." This review assesses the global evidence surrounding the feminization of agriculture. First, it proposes a number of indicators to track the feminization of agriculture, noting that although limited data exist for some of the indicators, efforts should be expanded to collect data for all of them to provide better diagnostics of women's work in agriculture and their welfare. Next, it critically examines the factors that may lead to the feminization of agriculture and evaluates the empirical evidence on each factor worldwide. The review concludes by identifying policy imperatives based on the evidence on women's roles in agriculture in the context of rural transformation.

Agricultural Sector Economics --- Agriculture --- Employment --- Food Production --- Food Security --- Gender --- Gender and Rural Development --- Labor Markets --- Migration --- Rural Development --- Social Dev/Gender/Inclusion --- Social Protections and Labor

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The study assesses the impact of different types of land use rights certificates (LURC) on individual and household welfare, expanding on the previous research of Menon, Rodgers, and Kennedy (2016), which assessed the effects of LURCs on agricultural land on household welfare. This study considers more recent data from the Vietnam Household Living Standards Survey (VHLSS) of 2014 in addition to VHLSS data from 2002-08 and includes an analysis of LURCs for agricultural as well as residential land. The study findings are presented below in three sections. The first is an analysis of land use and LURC distribution trends based on the VHLSS data. The second draws on a group of impact evaluations that compares the effects of having different types of LURCs. We regress individuals' employment and health care outcomes on whether their name was included on a LURC. The treatment variables are whether one has been issued an agricultural or residential LURC, with controls for age, education, ethnicity, urban residence, household consumption, land area, and district. We also regress household-level outcomes-expenditures, credit levels, and incomes-on whether the household's LURC is singly or jointly titled. Notably, the distribution of LURCs is not randomized, making it difficult to estimate the causal effects of LURC status and thereby limiting the conclusions that can be drawn. The third section, using 2014 demographic data and LURC distributions, offers a cost-benefit analysis of efforts to convert and reissue all remaining singly titled LURCs to jointly titled ones. We estimate the benefit as the impact difference between single- and jointly titled LURCs as calculated in the impact evaluation section and estimate costs as those of reissuing a LURC.

Gender --- Gender and Rural Development --- Inequality --- Land Administration --- Poverty Reduction --- Rural Development --- Rural Land Policies for Poverty Reduction --- Rural Poverty Reduction

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Identifying opportunities to increase agricultural productivity and incomes is an important priority for rural development. Progress toward poverty reduction continued in recent years, but the contribution of the agriculture sector was weak, mainly because productivity improvements were relatively limited. Using detailed individual-level data on agricultural activities, this paper analyzes agricultural production patterns and associated productivity of farm households. Particular attention is paid to (i) diversification toward higher-value, export-oriented crops as a means to increase productivity and earnings; and (ii) gender differences in farming activities and outcomes. The role of structural factors such as access to land is also considered. There are three key findings in this paper. First, diversified farmers, especially those with a crop mix that is focused on export crops or other high-value crops have higher productivity and earnings. The productivity of paddy cultivation is significantly lower than that of other crops, leading to low earnings. Second, production patterns and productivity levels differ distinctively between men and women farmers. Female farmers have higher productivity, as measured by output value per acre, which is mainly explained by their smaller plot size and a crop mix that consists of higher-value crops. However, despite higher productivity, overall farm incomes are lower among female farmers, mainly due to lower access to land. Third, once land size and crop mix are accounted for, unequal access to resources eventually leads to a male productivity advantage, referred to as conditional advantage, after differential access to resources is controlled for via multivariate analysis. Policies to increase the crop mix toward higher-value, export-oriented crops and to equalize access to resources, including land and agricultural inputs, could help improve productivity and income, and reduce gender disparities.

Agricultural Productivity --- Agricultural Sector Economics --- Agriculture --- Climate Change and Agriculture --- Crops and Crop Management Systems --- Gender --- Gender and Rural Development --- Inequality --- Poverty --- Poverty Reduction