Gendered Misallocation of Labor: Evidence From Malawian Farmers

Nicholas Rahim

Status: Completed

Conditions: Maternal and Child Health Outcomes

Treatments: Other: Casual labor subsidy

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT06631768

IRB24-1234

Details and patient eligibility

About

The investigators will conduct a cluster randomized controlled trial across districts in Malawi to evaluate the effect of providing free casual labor to pregnant farmers and female farmers on agricultural output, maternal and child health outcomes, child development, and social networks.

Full description

This will be a cluster randomized control trial (RCT), where 75 of the districts in which One Acre Fund (1AF) currently operates within in Malawi will be randomly selected for inclusion in this study. Of these 75 districts, 38 will be randomly selected to implement the intervention. The intervention constitutes a voucher offered to all female famers who are currently enrolled in the 1AF program who are pregnant and/or have a child ages 1 years and below that entitles the recipient to a set number of days of labor from casual workers employed by local 1AF offices. The remaining 37 districts will serve as the control group.

Data will be collected at baseline during the planting season and endline at the conclusion of the harvest season. Data collected will pertain to agricultural output, individual and household demographics, obstetric history and outcomes, mental health, maternal health, child health and development, and social networks.

Enrollment: 989 patients

Sex: Female

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Pregnant at time of One Acre Fund program rollout
• Mother to at least one child aged below 1 years of age

Exclusion criteria

-None

Trial design

Primary purpose: Other

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

---

989 participants in 2 patient groups

Treatment arm with casual labor voucher program

Experimental group

Description:

Eligible members (pregnant and/or mother of at least one child aged 1 years or younger) of 1AF in the randomly selected treatment districts receive vouchers for a set number of days of free work from casual laborers employed by local 1AF offices. This is in addition to standard 1AF programming.

Treatment:

Other: Casual labor subsidy

Control arm

No Intervention group

Description:

Eligible members will only receive standard 1AF programming in randomly selected control districts. They will not receive the labor subsidy during the study period.