IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/jafrec/v34y2025i2p208-236..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Rural Underemployment and Urbanisation: Insights from a 9-year Panel from Malawi

Author

Listed:
  • Hanne Van Cappellen
  • Joachim De Weerdt

Abstract

Rural labour markets in Africa are frequently characterised by underemployment, with farmers unable to fully deploy throughout the year one of their most important assets—their labour. Using a nine-year panel data set on 1,407 working-age adults from rural Malawi, we document changes in rural underemployment over this period and how they are associated with urbanisation. Nearby urban growth is linked to increased hours worked in casual labour (ganyu) and in non-agricultural sectors, at the expense of work on the household farm. Improved urban access is also associated with a small increase in wage labour and, at the intensive margin, with hours supplied in household enterprises. We draw lessons from these results for policies, investments and interventions to leverage urban growth for rural development.

Suggested Citation

  • Hanne Van Cappellen & Joachim De Weerdt, 2025. "Rural Underemployment and Urbanisation: Insights from a 9-year Panel from Malawi," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 34(2), pages 208-236.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:jafrec:v:34:y:2025:i:2:p:208-236.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jae/ejae004
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    rural labour markets; underemployment; urbanisation; panel data; sub-Saharan Africa; Malawi; JEL classification: J22; J24; J43;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • J43 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Agricultural Labor Markets

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:jafrec:v:34:y:2025:i:2:p:208-236.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/csaoxuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.