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

Female-headed households, not surprisingly, have fewer male adult family members contributing
labor to crop production. They compensate by increasing the labor contribution of female adults in
the family, increasing the contribution of children, and making greater use of hired labor than maleheaded
households. Over 90 percent of our sample of female-headed households made use of hired
labor, compared to just 80 percent among male-headed households (see Table 4.1.79).
As per capita expenditure rises, households rely less on family labor and more on hired labor. The
contribution of hired labor rises from 17 percent in the lowest expenditure category to 34 percent in
the highest. Hiring labor is not limited to higher-income households, however: over three-quarters
of the households in the poorest expenditure category use some hired labor. Furthermore, the use
of child family labor is not limited to poor households. Children contribute 7-8 percent of the total
labor input in every expenditure category (see Table 4.1.80).
Somewhat surprisingly, large farms are no more reliant on hired labor than small farms. The
contribution of hired labor to total labor input remains around 21-26 percent across farm-size
categories. One explanation is that large farms tend to have large families living on them, so the
total supply of family labor is greater. In addition, the labor input per hectare on large farms is
much smaller, as described earlier. Another pattern is that the contributions of women and children
increase, while that of men decreases, on larger farms.
The contribution of each type of labor differs by crop. For example, the hired labor account for 25-
30 percent of the labor input in growing maize and manioc, but 10-15 percent of the total in
cultivating sorghum/millet and yams. This difference may not reflect some characteristic of the
crops themselves as much as the nature of labor markets in the regions where these crops are
grown. Sorghum/millet and yams are grown in the north where labor markets are less active, while
maize and manioc are somewhat concentrated in the south. Another pattern is that the role of
female family members is much smaller in the case of yams and manioc than for the other crops.
Although cash crops are sometimes considered “male” crops, the evidence from Bénin suggests that
female family members contribute more to cotton production than to any other crops with the
exception of cowpeas (see Table 4.1.81).
Finally, we consider the distribution of labor across activities for each type of labor. Male family
members do not differ from the average in terms of the allocation of labor to each activity. On the
other hand, both female family members and children spend a disproportionate share of their time
on the harvest (46 percent of female labor input and 35 percent of children’s input). Hired labors
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