Labor (mis?)measurement in agriculture
Livelihoods are changing rapidly in rural areas. Measuring and categorizing peoples’ labor activities in relation to the agricultural sector is important for understanding income earning opportunities and designing effective policy. Conventional data collection methods ask about individuals’ main wo...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Artículo preliminar |
| Language: | Inglés |
| Published: |
International Food Policy Research Institute
2021
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/10568/143439 |
| _version_ | 1855535559426965504 |
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| author | Ambler, Kate Herskowitz, Sylvan Maredia, Mywish K. |
| author_browse | Ambler, Kate Herskowitz, Sylvan Maredia, Mywish K. |
| author_facet | Ambler, Kate Herskowitz, Sylvan Maredia, Mywish K. |
| author_sort | Ambler, Kate |
| collection | Repository of Agricultural Research Outputs (CGSpace) |
| description | Livelihoods are changing rapidly in rural areas. Measuring and categorizing peoples’ labor activities in relation to the agricultural sector is important for understanding income earning opportunities and designing effective policy. Conventional data collection methods ask about individuals’ main work activities over the past year. Descriptions are recorded in the field, postcoded, and eventually categorized. This approach is costly to collect, fatiguing for respondents, and may create distortions. We show that a more direct approach, asking respondents to categorize their major work activities themselves, provides similar resulting data despite some caveats and lessons for best enumeration practices. We compare these main activities to a series of yes/no questions about participation in a set of specific work tasks. We find a 12% incidence of “missing” work, whereby individuals who reported participation in at least one but did not have any recorded major activities. Looking by sector of work, women and youth are disproportionately more likely to have agricultural contributions “missed,” while we find no corresponding bias in undercounting of non-agricultural work. Finally, we test the effect of randomly positioning the task-based questions before the listing of major activities but do not find significant effects on the number or type of activities reported. |
| format | Artículo preliminar |
| id | CGSpace143439 |
| institution | CGIAR Consortium |
| language | Inglés |
| publishDate | 2021 |
| publishDateRange | 2021 |
| publishDateSort | 2021 |
| publisher | International Food Policy Research Institute |
| publisherStr | International Food Policy Research Institute |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | CGSpace1434392025-12-02T21:02:41Z Labor (mis?)measurement in agriculture Ambler, Kate Herskowitz, Sylvan Maredia, Mywish K. youth employment surveys employment households measurement youth labour agriculture survey design rural areas women Livelihoods are changing rapidly in rural areas. Measuring and categorizing peoples’ labor activities in relation to the agricultural sector is important for understanding income earning opportunities and designing effective policy. Conventional data collection methods ask about individuals’ main work activities over the past year. Descriptions are recorded in the field, postcoded, and eventually categorized. This approach is costly to collect, fatiguing for respondents, and may create distortions. We show that a more direct approach, asking respondents to categorize their major work activities themselves, provides similar resulting data despite some caveats and lessons for best enumeration practices. We compare these main activities to a series of yes/no questions about participation in a set of specific work tasks. We find a 12% incidence of “missing” work, whereby individuals who reported participation in at least one but did not have any recorded major activities. Looking by sector of work, women and youth are disproportionately more likely to have agricultural contributions “missed,” while we find no corresponding bias in undercounting of non-agricultural work. Finally, we test the effect of randomly positioning the task-based questions before the listing of major activities but do not find significant effects on the number or type of activities reported. 2021-10-26 2024-05-22T12:14:09Z 2024-05-22T12:14:09Z Working Paper https://hdl.handle.net/10568/143439 en https://doi.org/10.2499/p15738coll2.133739 https://doi.org/10.2499/p15738coll2.134183 https://doi.org/10.2499/p15738coll2.134913 Open Access application/pdf International Food Policy Research Institute Ambler, Kate; Herskowitz, Sylvan; and Maredia, Mywish K. 2021. Labor (mis?)measurement in agriculture. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2050. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). https://doi.org/10.2499/p15738coll2.134694. |
| spellingShingle | youth employment surveys employment households measurement youth labour agriculture survey design rural areas women Ambler, Kate Herskowitz, Sylvan Maredia, Mywish K. Labor (mis?)measurement in agriculture |
| title | Labor (mis?)measurement in agriculture |
| title_full | Labor (mis?)measurement in agriculture |
| title_fullStr | Labor (mis?)measurement in agriculture |
| title_full_unstemmed | Labor (mis?)measurement in agriculture |
| title_short | Labor (mis?)measurement in agriculture |
| title_sort | labor mis measurement in agriculture |
| topic | youth employment surveys employment households measurement youth labour agriculture survey design rural areas women |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/10568/143439 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT amblerkate labormismeasurementinagriculture AT herskowitzsylvan labormismeasurementinagriculture AT marediamywishk labormismeasurementinagriculture |