Social Roles, Human Capital, and the Intrahousehold Division of Labour: Evidence from Pakistan

Marcel Fafchamps, Agnes Quisumbing, International Food Policy Research Institute and U.S.A.

No 11, Economics Series Working Papers from University of Oxford, Department of Economics

Abstract: Using detailed data from rural Pakistan, this paper investigates whether human capital, learning by doing, gender, and one`s status within the family - heretoforth family status - affect the division of labor within households. Results suggest the presence of returns to individual specialization in all farm, non-farm, 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.

Keywords: economics of the family; social norms; labor (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J2 O1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2000-07-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:c150cca0-8725-4661-8b82-39a096a55f65 (text/html)

Related works:
Journal Article: Social roles, human capital, and the intrahousehold division of labor: evidence from Pakistan (2003)
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:oxf:wpaper:11

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economics Series Working Papers from University of Oxford, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Anne Pouliquen ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).