The Nexus between Gender, Collective Action for Public Goods, and Agriculture : Evidence from Malawi

McCarthy, Nancy ; Kilic, Talip

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: ACCOUNTING;    ACTIVE PARTICIPATION;    AGRICULTURAL COOPERATIVE;    AGRICULTURAL COOPERATIVES;    AGRICULTURE;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-6806
RP-ID  :  WPS6806

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Across the developing world, publicgoods exert significant impacts on the local rural economyin general and agricultural productivity and welfareoutcomes in particular. Economic and social-culturalheterogeneity have, however, long been documented asdetrimental to collective capacity to provide public goods.In particular, women are often under-represented in localleadership and decision-making processes, as are youngadults and minority ethnic groups.While democraticprinciples dictate that broad civic engagement by women andother groups could improve the efficiency and effectivenessof local governance and increase public goods provision, theempirical evidence on these hypotheses is scant. This paperdevelops a theoretical model highlighting the complexity ofconstructing a "fair" schedule of individualcontributions, given heterogeneity in costs and benefitsthat accrue to people depending, for instance, on theirgender, age, ethnicity, and education. The modeldemonstrates that representative leadership and broadparticipation in community organizations can mitigate thenegative impacts of heterogeneity on collective capacity toprovide public goods. Nationally-representative householdsurvey data from Malawi, combined with geospatial andadministrative information, are used to test this hypothesisand estimate the relationship between collective capacityfor public goods provision and community median estimates ofmaize yields and household consumption expenditures percapita. The analysis shows that similarities between theleadership and the general population, in terms of genderand age, and active participation by women and young adultsin community groups alleviate the negative effects ofheterogeneity and increase collective capacity, which inturn improves agricultural productivity and welfare.