Gender and Resource Allocation Decisions in Farm Households: Evidence from a South African Land Reform Programme

Fitzhenry, Nicholas

Gender and Resource Allocation Decisions in Farm Households: Evidence from a South African Land Reform Programme

Master Thesis

2019

Abstract

I study whether South African farm households participating in a land reform program make Pareto efficient intrahousehold consumption decisions. Using evaluation survey data of beneficiary households participating in South Africa’s Land Redistribution for Agricultural Development (LRAD) program, I estimate and test the unitary and collective models of intrahousehold resource allocation. By estimating the households’ demand function’s responses to the size of land grant transfers going to resident men and women, I find evidence rejecting the income pooling hypothesis of the unitary model. On the other hand, I cannot reject the hypothesis that resource allocation is Pareto efficient, satisfying the test of the collective model. An alternative test of the collective model using the z-conditional demand approach proposed by Bourguignon, Browning and Chiappori (2009) also favours Pareto efficiency.

Keywords

Applied Economics

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