Not your average job: measuring farm labor in Tanzania

Vellore Arthi, Kathleen Beegle, Joachim De Weerdt and Amparo Palacios-Lopez

No 21, IOB Analyses & Policy Briefs from Universiteit Antwerpen, Institute of Development Policy (IOB)

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.

Keywords: Tanzania; data collection; surveys (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 3 pages
Date: 2016-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-dev
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Not your average job: Measuring farm labor in Tanzania (2018)
Working Paper: Not your average job: measuring farm labor in Tanzania (2016)
Working Paper: Not your average job: measuring farm labor in Tanzania (2016)
Working Paper: Not your average job: measuring farm labor in Tanzania (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iob:apbrfs:2016004

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