Herder-related violence, labor allocation, and the gendered response of agricultural households

Jeffrey R. Bloem, Amy Damon, David C. Francis and Harrison Mitchell

Journal of Development Economics, 2025, vol. 176, issue C

Abstract: Violent conflict between nomadic herders and settled agricultural communities in Nigeria occurs as both groups clash over the use of land and natural resources, in part, due to a changing climate. We generate theory and evidence to study the labor responses of individuals within agricultural households to herder-related violence and consider a “shadow of violence” mechanism, whereby previous exposure to a violent event alters labor responses to a recent event. Using panel data from 2010 through 2019, we highlight how exposure to violence can lead to differing responses in the planting or harvest seasons and among men or women. In the planting season, among both men and women living in households with no previous exposure to herder-related violence, we find that exposure (i.e., singular exposure) leads to a reduction in household enterprise work, but among households with previous exposure experience, exposure (i.e., repeated exposure) leads to an increase in household enterprise work. Meanwhile, repeated exposure to herder-related violence reduces agricultural work among men only. This leads total hours worked to decline in response to singular exposure and to increase in response to repeated exposure especially among women. In the harvest season, we find that singular exposure increases agricultural work among both men and women, but repeated exposure reduces agricultural work among men only.

Keywords: Conflict; Violence; Agriculture; Farmer-herder; Gender (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E26 E29 I31 Q12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030438782500063X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:deveco:v:176:y:2025:i:c:s030438782500063x

DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2025.103512

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Development Economics is currently edited by M. R. Rosenzweig

More articles in Journal of Development Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().