Impact Of Agricultural Market Reforms On Smallholder Farmers In ...

expenditures as well as the rental value of the residence), farm size per household, or gender of
the household head. The regional breakdown includes the North, the Center, and the South.
Total household expenditures are grouped into five quintiles. Each quintile groups 20 percent of
the households (or 160 households) in a separate expenditure category. For example, the lowest
quintile represents the 160 poorest households (those that have the smallest value of annual
expenditures per capita) while the upper quintile is made up of the 160 richest households. The
average value of total per capita expenditures of each expenditure quintile is presented at the top
of Table 5.2. It ranges from MK 1,079for the lowest expenditure quintile to MK 6,550 for the
wealthiest group. 29 Average total per capita expenditures for all households are MK 3,083.
Similar to the expenditures quintiles described earlier, farm households are grouped into five
categories according to farm size, with the first quintile representing the households with the
smallest farms (0.5 ha on average) and the fifth quintile representing those with the largest farms
(3.0 ha on average.)
Socio-economic characteristics
Analysis of the smallholder farmer data indicates that average household size is about 5
with an average number of 2 to 3 children per household (see Table 5.2). Household size
decreases with per capita expenditures as the poorest households have an average of 6 members
while the richest have an average of 4. Table 5.2 also shows the breakdown of the household
heads of each family by ethnic group and religious affiliation. Results show that ethnic group
composition in Malawi is fairly diverse although ethnic groups have a distinct geographical
distribution. The Chewa, which are the largest ethnic group representing a little more than onethird
of the farm household heads in Malawi, are mainly found in the Center. The Tumbuka are
largely present in the North, while the Yawo and Lomwe are concentrated in the South. More
than three-quarter of farm household heads are Christians whereas less than one-fifth are Moslem.
Moslems are more concentrated in the Southern region of Malawi while the North has the highest
concentration of Christians. The distribution of ethnic groups and religious background by
expenditure category does not show any definite trend in terms of one group being richer than the
other.
29 It is difficult to convert these numbers into US dollar because the Malawian Kwacha was devalued
several times during the period 1997/98, increasing from 15 MK/US$ in 1997 to 42 MK/US$ at the end of
1998.
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