Abstract: This paper reports on the WEAI collected for male and female adults in 500 households in the Tahoua region in Niger. Rural households in Niger remain heavily dependent on agriculture for their livelihoods. Women play a critical and potentially transformative role in agricultural and rural sector growth but face persistent constraints especially when venturing beyond the cultivation of subsistence crops. Our data reveal that men are more empowered compared to women in all but two domains (autonomy and leisure). This discrepancy in empowerment stems primarily from unequal access to assets, including land, and the difficulties women face in speaking in front of a mixed audience. For both men and women, limited group membership strongly contributes to disempowerment. These findings suggest that increased empowerment could contribute to income diversification if access to credit for women could be enhanced. One way to do this – and further increase empowerment – would be to reactivate the existing institutional infrastructure of producer groups or rotating savings schemes (ROSCAS). This work was funded by the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) in the context of a collaborative agreement with IFPRI to conduct a Trade, Gender Equality and Enterprise Growth Analysis to guide MCC investments in Niger. Presenter’s Bio: Fleur joined IFPRI in September 2007. She holds a PhD in Development Economics from Wageningen University, the Netherlands. Her research mainly takes a micro-economic approach and focuses on households in rural West Africa. She has worked extensively on empirically linking migration and agricultural production. As a postdoctoral fellow in IFPRI's West and Central Africa Office she has given analytical support on a per-country basis for the implementation of CAADP (Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program). As a research fellow, she has worked on analyzing the linkages between agriculture, health and education to identify priorities for public investment in rural areas of Burkina Faso. Fleur is currently based in IFPRI’s Kampala office and mainly working on smallholder value chain integration through rural producer organizations.

1. Empowerment and agricultural production:
Evidence from the WEAI in NigerŦ
Fleur Wouterse
Work funded by the Millennium Challenge Corporation and part of a broader analysis on
Trade, Gender Equality and Enterprise Growth to guide MCC investments in Niger.

2. Problem statement
 Rural households in Niger remain heavily dependent on
agriculture for their livelihoods
 Women play a critical and potentially transformative role
in agricultural and rural sector growth but face persistent
obstacles and economic constraints limiting further
inclusion in agriculture and rural development
 Arguably, these obstacles are particularly pronounced in
primary households headed by a female
 The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) is
a survey-based index designed to measure the
empowerment, agency and inclusion of women in the
agricultural sector
 Here, we consider the WEAI as a human capital variable
and assess the role of the state of empowerment in
agriculture

3. Background
 Human capital refers to any aspect of a person that
produces economic value and from which one cannot be
separated the way one can be from physical or financial
assets (Becker, 1975)
 The role of human capital as an engine of agricultural
growth has been given due attention in the literature
 Increases in output beyond increases in land, man-hours
and physical reproducible capital have been attributed to
investment in human capital (Schultz 1961)
 In the field of microeconomics, role of human capital
assessed by estimating a production function with human
capital variables entering linearly as additional inputs

4. Background
 Two problems with this approach:
1. There may be nonlinearities in the production-human
capital relationship
2. Environmental variables, such as human capital
variables, not only affect the location of a household
on a given production function but also determine the
choice of the implemented technique so that the
assumption of constant coefficients on traditional
inputs may be invalid

5. Data
 Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI)
and agricultural household surveys used to collect
data in 500 households in three communes
(Dogueraoua, Malbaza and Tsernaoua) in the Tahoua
region of Niger during April-May 2015
 Villages randomly selected using probability
proportional to size sampling while households were
randomly selected using the quota method.

6. Setting
 Three-fourths of Niger is covered by the Sahara desert
 The rainy season lasts only three months, with total
rainfall of 150–600 mm per year
 Maximum temperatures are high (45 degrees Celsius in
the shade in April–May)
 Livestock production is a major component of farming
 Millet is the most important staple crop, occupying
nearly half of the total harvested area in the country
 No land market
 Traditional production practices with little external
inputs
 Cultivation largely rain-fed

7. Individual level disempowerment
Males Female T-test
Input in productive decisions 0.00 (0.05)a 0.32 (0.47) -12.74
Autonomy 0.47 (0.03) 0.39 (0.49) 2.26
Asset ownership 0.05 (0.22) 0.42 (0.49) -11.40
Input in asset decisions 0.12 (0.33) 0.47 (0.50) -9.71
Access to and decisions about credit 0.03 (0.17) 0.20 (0.40) -3.33
Control over use of income 0.04 (0.19) 0.16 (0.37) -5.47
Group membership 0.76 (0.42) 0.94 (0.25) -6.87
Speaking in public 0.26 (0.44) 0.68 (0.47) -12.71
Workload 0.10 (0.02) 0.21 (0.40) -4.27
Leisure 0.09 (0.28) 0.08 (0.27) 0.35
Weighted disempowerment 0.37 (0.18) 0.42 (0.20) -3.66
Number of observations 360 409

8. Contribution of indicators to disempowerment

9. Disempowerment by household type
All Dual Primary
(female)
Primary (male)
Input in productive decisions 0.33 (0.38) 0.30 (0.25) 0.40 (0.49) 0.31 (0.46)
Autonomy 0.42 (0.46) 0.46 (0.43) 0.38 (0.49) 0.39 (0.49)
Asset ownership 0.29 (0.33) 0.30 (0.25) 0.29 (0.40) 0.27 (0.40)
Input in asset decisions 0.36 (0.33) 0.36 (0.27) 0.38 (0.41) 0.34 (0.38)
Control over use of income 0.31 (0.38) 0.31 (0.28) 0.36 (0.48) 0.25 (0.44)
Group membership 0.73 (0.39) 0.74 (0.31) 0.78 (0.42) 0.65 (0.48)
Speaking in public 0.51 (0.42) 0.45 (0.32) 0.62 (0.48) 0.55 (0.50)
Workload 0.14 (0.30) 0.16 (0.29) 0.16 (0.37) 0.06 (0.24)
Leisure 0.09 (0.24) 0.07 (0.18) 0.09 (0.28) 0.12 (0.32)
Weighted Disempowerment 0.40 0.39 0.43 0.39
Number of observations 479 258 126 95

10. Agricultural production descriptives
All
(N=478)
Dual
(N=256)
Primary
(female)
(N=125)
Primary
(male)
(N=95)
Output (kg) 1486.06
(4515.45)
2082.77
(5885.46)
629.26
(1311.47)
999.14
(2111.63)
Output/ha 422.89
(1086.82)
509.82
(1260.79)
296.18
(454.80)
355.39
(1156.31)
Labor (days) 120.40
(124.17)
132.91
(131.65)
107.08
(117.26)
104.08
(108.64)
Fertilizer (kg) 36.36
(103.59)
43.26
(104.02)
29.06
(109.20)
27.28
(94.14)
Land (ha) 5.75
(8.07)
6.48
(9.05)
3.85
(5.18)
6.27
(8.02)
Equipment
(FCFA)
106 402
(180 063)
122 582
(179 932)
55 873
(124 693)
129 117
(225 542)

11. Model
 Smooth variable coefficient Cobb-Douglas
production function
ln𝑦𝑖 = 𝑎0 + 𝛼 ln𝑧𝑖 + ln𝑋𝑖 𝛽0 + 𝛽ln𝑋𝑖(ln𝑧𝑖) + 𝑢𝑖
𝑦𝑖 = farm level output
𝑧𝑖 = human capital variables
(empowerment and education)
𝑋𝑖 = traditional input variables
(land, labor, fertilizer, value of equipment and
traction animals)

12. Estimation strategy
1. IV methods to identify fertilizer use, labor
input and empowerment
• household composition variables
• number of plots cultivated
• time to paved road
• time to nearest potable water source
• distance to nearest potable water source
• number of months village is accessible
2. Li and Wang (1998) generalized consistent
conditional model test for functional form
selection

13. Results: non linearities
• The relationship between empowerment and agricultural
production is nonlinear and rather concave
• Although flat for values of disempowerment of up to
0.30 as individuals become increasingly disempowered,
returns become consistently negative
-3-2-1
0
Gradient
-1.5 -1 -.5
Ln Disempowerment

14. Results: interaction effects
Linear Education Disempowerment
Ln Land 2.03 (0.86)a** -0.02 (0.16) 1.85 (0.85)**
Ln Value of equipment -0.52 (0.29)* 0.05 (0.06) -0.61 (0.26)**
Ln Fertilizer use 1.71 (0.57)** -0.19 (0.11)* 1.31 (0.61)**
Ln Labor -1.92 (1.21)* 0.12 (0.21) -2.34 (1.26)**
Intercepts 12.87 (5.20)** -0.86 (0.89) 11.13 (5.03)
R-squared 0.59
Breusch-Pagan test for heteroskedasticity 𝝌 𝟐
𝟏 = 𝟎. 𝟕𝟒, prob>𝝌 𝟐
=0.39
Ramsey’s RESET test F(3, 461) =0.97, prob>F=0.36
F-test of random effects on intercept F(2,461)=2.82, prob>F=0.06
F-test of random effects on coefficient F(8,461)=2.20, prob>F=0.03

15. Results: interaction effects
 Empowerment is technology changing
 Disempowerment interacts positively with
returns to land and fertilizer and negatively with
returns to labor and equipment
 Disempowerment hampers returns to labor and,
to a lesser extent, equipment
 Given, for example, the important contribution
of group membership to empowerment,
increased group membership through its effect
on empowerment would enhance the efficiency
with which labor is applied and equipment is
used

16. Results: elasticities
Household type All Dual Primary (female) Primary (male)
Productivity elasticity for human capital variables
Disempowerment -0.77 (1.09) -0.81 (1.27) -0.98 (1.11) -0.53 (1.08)
Education -0.09 (0.12) -0.11 (0.15) -0.08 (0.11) -0.12 (0.11)
Production elasticity for traditional input variable
Land 0.23 (0.22) 0.20 (0.20) 0.29 (0.23) 0.15 (0.33)
Labor 0.52 (0.29) 0.54 (0.28) 0.38 (0.32) 0.62 (0.44)
Fertilizer 0.26 (0.23) 0.25 (0.23) 0.39 (0.25) 0.19 (0.29)
Equipment 0.13 (0.09) 0.14 (0.09) 0.09 (0.10) 0.17 (0.12)

17. Results
 Increased formal education is associated with
a deterioration in output
 Returns to empowerment differ across
households groups and are much higher for
primary female headed households and lower
for primary male headed households
 Relatively higher disempowerment in female
headed primary households strongly affects
returns to their labor input and equipment
use

18. Results
0
.1.2.3.4
Density
2 4 6 8 10
Ln predicted output
All households
Dual households
Primary femaled headed households
Primary male headed households
kernel = epanechnikov, bandwidth = 0.2608

19. Conclusions and policy recommendations
 Female headed household less empowered
 Contributors are autonomy and control over
use of income, group membership and
speaking in public
 Empowerment is technology changing:
different production functions for different
households depending on the level of
empowerment
 Less empowered female headed households
generate lower returns from labor and
equipment
….and produce consistently less