IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/fcnddp/94514.html

Social Roles, Human Capital, And The Intrahousehold Division Of Labor: Evidence From Pakistan

Author

Listed:
  • Fafchamps, Marcel
  • Quisumbing, Agnes R.

Abstract

Using detailed data from rural Pakistan, this paper investigates whether human capital, learning by doing, gender, and one's status within the family affect the division of labor within households. Results suggest the presence of returns to individual specialization in all farm, nonfarm, and home-based activities. The intrahousehold division of labor is influenced by comparative advantage, based on human capital and by long-lasting returns to learning by doing, but we also find evidence of a separate effect of gender and family status. Households seem to operate as hierarchies with sexually segregated spheres of activity. The head of household and his or her spouse provide most of the labor within their respective spheres of influence; other members work less. When present in the household, daughters-in-law work systematically harder than daughters of comparable age, build, and education. Other findings of interest are that there are increasing returns to scale in most household chores, that larger households work more off-farm, and that better educated individuals enjoy more leisure.

Suggested Citation

  • Fafchamps, Marcel & Quisumbing, Agnes R., 1999. "Social Roles, Human Capital, And The Intrahousehold Division Of Labor: Evidence From Pakistan," FCND Discussion Papers 94514, CGIAR, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:fcnddp:94514
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.94514
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/94514/files/social%20roles%20human%20capital%20and%20the.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.94514?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • O1 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development
    • J2 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor

    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:ags:fcnddp:94514. 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: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ifprius.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.