A Case of Landed Entrepreneurs: Female Land Ownership and Labour Allocation

Decisions in Kenya

Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the

Degree of Master of Science in Economics for Development
at the University of Oxford

30 June 2020

By

Candidate number = 1048844

Word count: 9936

 Abstract
In this study, I use female land ownership as a proxy for bargaining power to analyse its impact
on women’s market labour allocation decisions, primarily for unpaid work, wage work and
business. With a unique dataset that captures gender-disaggregated information on land
ownership as well as income-generating activities in rural agricultural households in Kenya, I
use a non-cooperative bargaining framework proposed by Heath & Tan (2020) and a
multinomial logit specification. Results show that a woman who owns land has 0.18 higher
probability of running business, 0.06 lower probability of engaging in unpaid work and 0.10
lesser chances of wage work. Further disaggregation of plot ownership show that these
differences are more pronounced for single plot owners than joint plot owners. This has
important implications for land reforms and joint titling programs.
Table of Contents

1. Introduction ................................................................................................................... 4

2. Background ................................................................................................................... 5

2.1 Constitution .................................................................................................................. 5

2.2 Customary Law............................................................................................................. 6

3. Relevant Literature ....................................................................................................... 6

4. Data ................................................................................................................................ 8

4.1 Data Source................................................................................................................... 8

4.2 Data Merging ................................................................................................................ 9

4.3 Variable Construction ................................................................................................... 9

4.4 Descriptive Statistics .................................................................................................. 11

5. Empirical Framework ................................................................................................ 12

5.1 Household Models ...................................................................................................... 12

5.2 Theoretical Framework............................................................................................... 13

5.3 Empirical Specification .............................................................................................. 14

6. Results and Discussion................................................................................................ 14

6.1 Female Plot Ownership .............................................................................................. 14

6.2 Heterogeneous Analysis I: Single versus Joint Plot Ownership................................. 16

6.3 Heterogeneous Analysis II: Married Women ............................................................. 16

6.4 Robustness Checks ..................................................................................................... 16

7. Limitations ................................................................................................................... 17

8. Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 18

9. Appendix ...................................................................................................................... 19

10. Bibliography ................................................................................................................ 27

1. Introduction
The intrahousehold bargaining literature suggests that women’s bargaining power affects
consumption and expenditure patterns of the household as well as household production
decisions such as labour allocation to care and domestic work, wage or agricultural work.
(Doss, 2013). Consumption outcomes may include but are not limited to education and health
of children (Allendorf, 2007; Duflo, 2003), household budget shares of food and private goods
(Doss, 2006; Duflo & Udry, 2004). Other outcomes like overall well-being (Panda & Agarwal,
2005) and empowerment indicators (Allendorf, 2007) have also been used in some studies. In
this dissertation, I focus on aspects of the production side, particularly market labour
allocations to unpaid work, wage work or business. By making use of a unique data set that
captures individual-level data on paid and unpaid employment as well as parcel-level data, I
aim to study how female land ownership, as a proxy for bargaining power, can affect their
employment choices.
Land is an important resource in developing countries. A natural way to study land is to look
at agricultural production. Some of seminal papers on land have looked at gender differentials
in farm productivity (Udry et al., 1995), intensity of farming (Udry, 1996) and specialization
of crops (Duflo & Udry, 2004) and found allocative inefficiencies.
Land is also an important indicator of bargaining power.(Agarwal, 1994, 1997). Evidence
suggests that land owned by women is associated with positive outcomes, including higher
budget shares for food and education (Doss, 2006); reduced risks of marital violence (Panda &
Agarwal, 2005); improved child health (Allendorf, 2007). Multiple studies have linked land
ownership with women’s empowerment. Across various developing countries, like Nepal
(Allendorf, 2007; Mishra & Sam, 2016), India (Mookerjee, 2019), China (Wang, 2014);
researchers have found that land rights and gender equitable reforms improve women’s role in
household decision making. Recent studies have looked at land ownership and their impact on
women’s labour supply. In Tanzania, Peterman (2011) finds that women’s land rights affect
women’s employment outside the house and their earnings. In India, Heath and Tan (2020)
propose a ‘control over income’ channel, to suggest female land ownership raises women’s
autonomy, which leads to an increase in female labour supply. Furthermore, Deere et al. (2004)
find that female land rights are positively related with off-farm income rather than farm income
in dual-headed households in Peru, suggesting that land ownership increases a woman’s
bargaining power, thus allowing her to work outside the house. Building upon this research, I
look at the association between female land ownership and women’s labour allocation
decisions in Kenya. I find that women who own land have a higher chance of running their
own businesses, and they are less likely to opt for wage work or unpaid work.

2. Background
Female land ownership is determined by inheritance and marital property regimes. Three main
sources of law operate in Kenya: religious law, customary law, and the Constitution. Although
the Kenyan Constitution stipulates gender equality in access to and ownership of land through
the 2013 Matrimonial Property Act and the 1981 Law of Succession, it also recognises the
customary and religious laws which are often discriminatory.

2.1 Constitution
The Kenyan Constitution recognizes three broad categories of land: public, private and
community. Public land includes government-owned land, private consists of land registered
under freehold or leasehold tenure and community land is one traditionally held by
communities as grazing areas or places of worship. (Gaafar, 2014)
Under the 2012 Land Registration Act, which calls for formal land title registrations (Gaafar,
2014), spouses hold the land as joint tenants. Sale, transfer, lease of land by any married
individual is rendered void without the consent of their spouse (FIDA, Kenya). However, actual
estimates suggest that only 5% of the land in Kenya is held under joint titles by women and
men and 1% solely owned by women. These statistics are stark contrast with the women’s
labour contribution in agricultural production. Around 89% of labour in subsistence farming
and 70% of labour in cash crop production is provided by women (FIDA, Kenya).
The 2013 Matrimonial Property Act establishes separate property for married couples as the
default property regime, unless and otherwise stated in the prenuptial agreement. Women retain
ownership of land or property held prior to marriage and are entitled to marital property
according to their contribution. Marital property is defined as marital house, household effects
and any other property jointly owned or acquired during marriage. Gifts received from family
are not regarded as shared marital property. In terms of contribution, the Act recognizes both
monetary as well as non-monetary contributions, such as domestic work, childcare, and farm
work, by women. But it is unclear as to how can one value or provide a proof for non-monetary
contribution (Abalaka, 2020). Historically, matters of property distribution upon involving
divorce or inheritance have been at the discretion of courts, which have passed conflicting
judgements owing to wide variety of interpretations of customary laws as well as subjective
understanding of the term ‘contribution’.
Law of Succession Act gives both men and women rights in matters of inheritance. A surviving
spouse is entitled to deceased’s property. Upon the death of surviving spouse or remarriage (if
woman), the estate is transferred to male and female children. In case one dies leaving behind
no spouse or children, then the estate goes to father, if dead, then to mother. So, under this act,
even though women are given rights, men take an obvious priority.

2.2 Customary Law

Kenya has around 42 tribes, each with its own governance structure and land-management
customs (USAID). These diverse systems in aggregate are referred to as the customary law.
Approximately 70% of the land in Kenya falls under the category of community land (USAID)
and is governed by customary laws. Individuals gain access to land either by succession in
family or seasonal allotment by the elder in clan. Women tend to be discriminated against in
the provision of land rights under various social and customary practices owing to the largely
patrilineal system in place. Land is usually passed down to the male heir. In cases where women
do inherit land, the common practice of moving out of the local community and relocating to
the husband’s house leads to women losing access to inherited land. Under customary law,
marriage is a union of not just two individuals rather two clans, so divorce involves clan elders.
Women are not entitled to receive any spousal maintenance (USAID) or a share in their
husband’s property upon divorce. Since a married woman is considered an outsider to her
husband’s clan or lineage, she does not own any of her husband’s property during marriage,
neither does she receive any share in property upon the death of her husband (Kameri-Mbote,
2005). Especially a widow without a child, more specifically a son, is disadvantaged (Gaafar,
2014). All in all, women’s land rights are determined by their relationship with a male i.e.
father, husband, brother or any other male relative who has primary rights (Kameri-Mbote,
2005).
Even though Kenya’s Constitution provides a legal framework against gender discriminatory
practices, the overarching patriarchal norms and customs disenfranchise women of their land
rights.

3. Relevant Literature
Two recent papers look at how state-level land reforms alter women’s labour supply. In a non-
cooperative bargaining model, a gender-progressive reform improves a woman’s outside
option, thereby raises her threat point and bargaining power, which leads to increased labour
supply. Heath & Tan (2020) suggest that ‘control of income’ is a potential channel through
which a woman’s effective wage rises and thus it may lead to an increase in her labour supply.
They exploit the variation in the timing of the passage of Hindu Succession Act 1956 across
states in India. Using a pseudo-panel data constructed from five rounds of National Sample
Survey (NSS) with a difference-in-difference empirical strategy, they find that the inheritance
law reform leads to an increase in women’s labor supply by 4.1 percentage points and their
earnings by 18%. They use another cross-sectional dataset, National Family Health Survey
2005-06 (NFHS) to consolidate their findings. Using cohort comparison analysis with fixed
effects for year of birth, religion, and state; they gather supporting evidence for their suggested
channel of ‘control over income’. HSA is positively associated with women’s role in household
decision making and women’s mobility in and out of the house – greater autonomy by 0.17
standard deviations. Moreover, HSA leads to an increase in women’s labour supply; with an
overall increase in a woman’s probability of working by 6.1 percentage-points and a 3.1
percentage-point greater chance that a woman takes up a professional job.
Another panel study in rural Tanzania looks at the effects of women’s property and inheritance
rights (WPIR) and finds positive association with women’s employment and earnings. Using
a 13-year longitudinal panel data, Kagera Health and Development Survey (KHDS) from 1991-
2004; Peterman (2011) makes use of an individual-level fixed effects model with inverse
probability weights to control for unobserved heterogeneity and attrition bias. She overcomes
endogeneity issues by using community-level index for WPIR and finds that high WPIR is
associated with 15.3% increase in the probability for a woman being employed outside the
household and significantly higher earnings.
There are other observational studies that link female land ownership with their welfare
outcomes. In Nepal, Allendorf (2007) uses the 2001 Demographic and Health Survey with an
ordered logit model and finds that the odds of having decision making power increase by 50%
for women who own land.
Doss (2006) uses 1991/92 and 1998/99 Ghana Living Standards Survey to examine how
women’s asset ownership affects household expenditure. She finds that out of all the assets:
land, savings and business assets; share of household land held by women is a better proxy for
bargaining power and has the greatest impact on expenditure patterns. Results indicate that 1
percentage point increase in women’s share of land leads to an increase in the budget shares of
food and education by 2.91 and 0.05 percentage points respectively.
In another study by Deere et al. (2004), female land ownership is found to be negatively
associated with farm income in Paraguay and Brazil. Authors note that this is explained by the
disadvantages faced by female farmers including credit constraints, lack of access to inputs and
technologies. It is quite similar in argument to previous studies that have indicated
intrahousehold productive inefficiencies across plots owned by different genders (Goldstein &
Udry, 2008; Udry, 1996). Interestingly, researchers find that female land ownership is
associated with higher off-farm incomes for dual-headed households in Peru. They hypothesize
that women who own land and thereby possess greater bargaining power are able to allocate
their labour efficiently and this leads to higher off-farm income as well as higher net household
income. Authors suggest that another possibility is that women with higher bargaining power
are able to work outside the house, thereby raising off-farm incomes.
This is essentially where my dissertation fits in. I look at how female land ownership affects
women’s labour allocation, which is effectively a ternary choice between unpaid work, wage
work, or self-employment. I do not distinguish between farm versus off-farm work. Instead I
use ‘household production’ vs ‘market work’. Here household production includes leisure by
construction and includes any other activity that leads to production of goods which are
consumed within the household e.g. subsistence farming, domestic care work. Market work is
defined as time spent in producing goods that are ultimately sold in the market – could be paid
or unpaid work for the market. (Burda & Hamermesh, 2009).

4. Data
4.1 Data Source
This study makes use of a unique cross-sectional data set on rural agricultural households in
three counties of Kenya in 2017-181. The survey was jointly administered by the Global
Strategy to improve Agriculture and Rural Statistics (GSARS) and Kenya Bureau of Statistics
(KNBS). It captures information on household livelihood activities and collects sex-
disaggregated data on land ownership as well as employment and other work activities in the
last seven days and over the last year. Although the sample is not representative at the county
level, it provides valuable information at the individual level that might not be available in a
nationally representative survey such as the Living Standards and Measurement Study (LSMS).
While some empirical studies look at intrahousehold allocations using household as their unit
of analysis (eg. Deere et al., 2004; Doss, 2006) and others even use a higher sampling unit
(such as Peterman, 2011). The granularity of this dataset allows me to look at individual-level
outcomes. Under two-stage sampling, 36 enumeration areas (EAs) were randomly sampled

1
The survey can be accessed through Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nation (FAO)’s micro
data repository: https://microdata.fao.org/index.php/catalog/1756.
with 15 households from each EA. Out of 540 households, 495 were interviewed with 1746
individuals.

4.2 Data Merging

The survey comprised of nine different set of questionnaires, including household and
individual characteristics, crop-level data, parcel-level data, livestock, paid and unpaid
employment etc. I reshaped the plot data from long to wide for a comparable characterization
at the individual level. Some of the variables were collapsed at household level (e.g., number
of plots owned and rented by the household). These were merged with individual-level and
household-level data, respectively. Out of 495 households, 477 (96%) either own or rent land
parcels. Out of 477 landed households, 431 harvest crops on their parcels. So, these are
essentially landed households who engage in subsistence farming and sell their agricultural
produce in the market. Through this study, I aim to investigate how gender dynamics unfold in
land ownership and impact labour allocation decisions.

4.3 Variable Construction

4.3.1 Outcome variable
The individual questionnaire was administered to individuals 15 years of age and older.
Separate rosters for paid and unpaid employment have detailed information on multiple
income-generating activities for every individual. This includes the number of hours allocated
to each encoded activity on every day of the week. Labour time allocated to each activity is
then aggregated and classified under each of the three categories: unpaid work, wage work or
business. Unpaid work is defined as “help provided without being paid in any kind of business
run by your household or family or helping someone with his or her paid work.” Wage work
is defined as “working for a wage, salary, commission, or payment of any kind (including
cropping, livestock, and fishing activities).” Business is defined as “running or doing any kind
of business or income activity, big or small, by yourself or with one or more partners (including
cropping, livestock, and fishing activities).”
The surveyor then identifies ‘main job in the last week’ as the “job you worked the most hours
in last week” with the three categories (unpaid, wage or business) as answer options. The
respondent is then asked if the main job identified for last week is different from the main job
in the last 12 months. This recognizes seasonality in activities. Out of 619 individuals, only 31
report a change in work type.2 For women, only 13 shift their main jobs.3 For this study, I take
a union of main job during last week and main job during last year and construct a new variable,
Main job (𝑌𝑖 ), accounting for the changes in the categories. So, my outcome variable is a
categorical variable defined by the income-generating activity that takes up most of the labour-
time of an individual. It takes the value 1 if it is unpaid work, 2 if wage work, and 3 if business.
Here I have set 0 ‘none’ as the base category.4 This is to ensure that the outcome variable is
exhaustive for the entire working-age sample (i.e. individuals aged 15 years and older).

4.3.2 Land ownership

After reshaping parcel data, each plot can be identified against its individual owner(s). The
parcel roster asks for “Which household members own <insert plot id>?” There are a total of
599 plots out of which 499 are owned by household members and 100 are rented. Joint land
ownership is identified for plots with more than one owner. Out of 499 plots, 415 are single
owned whereas 83 are jointly owned. Inherited land is identified from the year of acquisition
of the plot. The question: “In which year did you first acquire <insert plot id> parcel?” records
year 1900 if the household has always had the land. I assume such a parcel to be inherited. 174
plots are inherited in the sample.
After merging all the datasets together: parcel characteristics, individual characteristics, and
household characteristics; each individual can be mapped against the plot(s) he/she owns. Land
ownership is a binary variable that takes the value 1 if an individual owns a plot and 0
otherwise. Similarly, single and joint land ownership variables are constructed where they take
the value 1 if the individual is single owner of a plot and if the individual is joint owner of the
plot, respectively. It is important to note here that single or joint ownership is the characteristic
of a plot so if an individual owns multiple plots, it might be the case that he/she is joint-owner
of one plot and single-owner of the other. In fact, there are 3 such individuals in the sample!

2
49 individuals report a change in the main job but since main job is identified under the three broad categories
of unpaid work, wage work and business; 18 of them continue working in the same category. i.e. they might have
shifted jobs but those jobs fall under the same category as before.
3
21 women report a change in their main job from last seven days to last year but 8 of them continue working
under the same category.
4
The base category can be understood as those individuals belonging to the working age group (i.e. 15 years and
older) but not engaging in any income-generating activity. They either spend their labour-time in own-use
production or leisure.
4.3.3 Individual-level controls
Some of the individual-level controls are used as it is or encoded as categorical variables from
the survey. Others such as education required a little more manipulation. The questionnaire
asks each respondent: “What was the highest level of formal education you <insert individual
id> completed?”. The answer options include non-university technical and vocational training
and other teacher training programs. According to the definition provided by the World Bank,
all such options are included under the category of Tertiary education.

4.3.4 Wealth Index

Since the survey does not collect information on income or earnings, I use a wealth index (WI)
that accounts for asset holdings, household utilities and other characteristics. The wealth index
is constructed by Principal Component Analysis (PCA) following the guidelines set out by
World Food Programme. (Hjelm et al., 2017). Steps in the creation of WI include selecting
variables, running summary statistics to ensure there is sufficient variation, followed by
recoding into binary variables, and running the PCA in STATA. Wealth index is formed by
dividing the sample into three quantiles: low, medium, and high.

4.4 Descriptive Statistics

Table 1 in Appendix A provides summary statistics for all the variables used in this study.
Figure 1 shows proportion of male and female plot owners respectively who fall under each of
the wealth index quantile i.e., low, medium, and high. 28% of the male plot owners belong to
the low wealth index and this proportion subsequently increases as we move from low to high
wealth index. Interestingly, we can see an opposite and rather bizarre trend for female plot
owners. As we move from low to high wealth index, the proportion of female plot owners falls
from 41% to 28%. This is interesting as it shows that female plot ownership is not driven by
household wealth. It implies that women belonging to wealthier households cannot just buy
land, instead there are other underlying mechanisms at play i.e. intrahousehold bargaining.
Plot ownership is further decomposed into single and joint ownership. In the case of single
ownership (Figure 3), males follow an intuitive trend as before i.e., higher proportion of plot
owners from high wealth index and lower proportion in low wealth index. On the other hand,
you will find equal proportions of female single plot owners across the three quantiles. This
again indicates that single ownership of plots in females cannot be explained by household
wealth. Interestingly, Figure 4 shows that both males and females who jointly own plot are
more likely to be found in lower wealth strata. This indicates that joint land ownership is more
common in households with relatively low asset holdings.
Breakdown of main job by wealth index shows that a woman belonging to high wealth index
i.e. asset-rich woman is more likely to run a business, equally likely to engage in wage work
and more likely to participate in unpaid work than an asset-poor woman. This indicates the
social pressure that a wealthier woman faces to engage in unpaid work. There are other
interesting correlations, but owing to limitation of space and time, I will leave this here.

5. Empirical Framework
5.1 Household Models
Becker introduced household theory in 1981 where he assumed a household functioning as a
single unit, pooling resources, and attaining Pareto efficient outcomes. This holds true if we
assume that all the household members have the same homothetic preferences, or the household
is operated by a single decisionmaker i.e. household head who maximises the household utility
function. (Becker, 1981). Since then, there has been a large body of empirical research that has
tested different aspects of a household, including unitary model, pooling of resources and
Pareto efficiency. Unitary model has been rejected across different studies in various contexts
(Browning & Chiappori, 1998; Duflo, 2003; S. J. Lundberg et al., 1997; Quisumbing &
Maluccio, 2003). Alderman et al. (1995) have gone as far as saying that the onus of justifying
the use of unitary model lays upon the researcher. There has been mix evidence on Pareto
efficiency. While some of the studies support efficiency (Browning & Chiappori, 1998;
Quisumbing & Maluccio, 2003) and assume a cooperative bargaining framework, others
completely reject it (Udry, 1996; Goldstein & Udry, 2008; Ashraf, 2009). Evidence from
Kenya also supports a non-cooperative bargaining framework. An experimental study by
Robinson (2012) in Western Kenya rejects Pareto efficiency where spouses do not fully insure
each other on exposure to exogenous shocks. In a nomadic pastoral setting in Northern Kenya,
McPeak and Doss (2006) find that husbands purposely locate the household farther from town
to limit wives’ milk marketing.
In our context, a unitary model would imply that the distribution of assets within a household
would not affect individual outcomes i.e., regardless of who owns land, labour allocation
decisions for individuals will be the same. This does not hold true as we will see later that as
land owned by women increases, it shifts their relative bargaining power and alters their labour
supply decisions. In the next subsection, I will follow a non-cooperative bargaining model set
up by Heath and Tan (2020).
5.2 Theoretical Framework
In this section I will set up a non-cooperative bargaining framework following Heath and Tan
(2020). Bargaining players in this setting are females and other members of the household.
These household members could be husbands in case of married women, for single women it
may be her parents, and so forth. Heath and Tan (2020) propose a ‘control of income’ channel
whereby land ownership can be thought of as a woman’s unearned income that raises her
autonomy within the household, which increases her gains from working as her effective wage
rises, and this may lead to an increase in labour supply. An alternative way to conceptualize
this would be that a woman’s land ownership improves her threat point - as the woman receives
her fair share of ‘contribution’ at the time of divorce – thus raising her bargaining power and
this leads to increased autonomy and labour supply. So land ownership increases a woman’s
fallback option. (Lundberg & Pollak, 1996)
Under non-cooperative bargaining framework without imposing Pareto efficiency, we have
separate utility functions for the husband and the wife5. Each of them gains utility from
consumption of private good, household public good and leisure. Each of them is endowed
with labour-time which they can allocate to either own-use production, leisure, or work outside
the house. In out context, work outside the house is a ternary choice between unpaid work,
wage work or business. Household public good is a production function of monetary
contribution from the husband as well as the wife. So, each of them maximises their utility
functions subject to their budget constraint. The budget constraint faced by the woman is that
the total expenditure (i.e., contribution to public good and consumption of private good) is less
than the income at the woman’s disposal. Income at her disposal is determined by her autonomy
i.e. control over income. A critical assumption here is that the woman is only able to retain a
fraction of her total earned and unearned income and the rest is captured by the household
members. So authors define autonomy as control over income. A higher autonomy implies a
greater say in household expenditures.
Keeping the total land owned by the household constant, increase in the woman’s land share
will increase her autonomy or her outside option, and this increases her labour supply. Authors
claim that autonomy is an increasing function of wife’s share of unearned income. This
suggests a greater increase in female labour supply for high-paying jobs. Intuitively, a higher

5
Throughout this section, when I say the husband and wife, it can be generalised to the male household
head and the female in case of unmarried/no longer married women.
wage implies a greater increase in effective wage (product of autonomy and wage), therefore a
proportionately greater increase in labour supply. In the context of our study, wage work and
business are relatively ‘high-paid’ than unpaid work. This is because unpaid work, by its very
definition, includes work or business without any remuneration. This implies that women who
own land will tend to supply more labour-time to wage work or running a business and less-
time to unpaid work as compared to women who do not own land. To summarize, we have the
following hypotheses:
Hypothesis I: women who own land tend to spend less time in unpaid work.
Hypothesis II: women who own land allocate more time to wage work.
Hypothesis III: women who own land allocate more time to running enterprise.

5.3 Empirical Specification

The outcome variable, 𝑌 is categorical. It represents each of the market labour choices6: unpaid
work, wage work, and enterprise. So, without assuming any ordinality in the labour choices, I
use a multinomial logit specification following Mishra and Sam (2016):
𝑌𝑖ℎ𝑐 = 𝛼 + 𝜏𝐿𝑖ℎ𝑐 + 𝑿𝒊𝒉 𝛽 + 𝑮𝒉𝒄 𝛿 + 𝑽𝒄 𝛾 + 𝜀𝑖ℎ𝑐
where i, h, and c index individual, household, and county, respectively. The parameter of
interest, 𝜏 measures impact of land ownership7 (𝐿𝑖 ) on labour allocation choices. Here land
ownership is a proxy for bargaining power. 𝑿𝒊 is a vector of individual characteristics such as
education, marital status, credit and savings club membership etc. 𝑮𝒉 is a vector of
household-level controls such as wealth index, number of adult males, adult females, and
children in the household etc. 𝑽𝒄 are dummies for each of the counties: Kiambu, Machakos
and Murang'a. 𝜀𝑖 represents unobserved characteristics.

6. Results and Discussion

6.1 Female Plot Ownership
Table 2 in Appendix reports multinomial logit estimations of female plot ownership on labour
allocation decisions (unpaid work, wage work, business) with base category set as ‘none’. I run
three models: Model 1 with individual-level controls. Model 2 controls for household-level

6
Base category is defined as ‘None’ i.e. individual does not engage in any market labour and might spend most
of their time in either own-use production or leisure.
7
Land ownership will later be split into two sub-categories: joint land ownership and single land ownership. In
the section following Results, 𝐿𝑖 will also take the form of inherited land.
characteristics and in addition to it, Model 3 controls for the counties. Table 3 reports average
marginal effects from the preferred model (Model 3). Base categories for each of the variable
are marked. It shows that on average, a woman who owns plot has a 17.6% higher probability
of running a business, and she is less likely to go for unpaid work by 5.7% and wage work by
10.5% as compared to a woman who does not own plot. Women with primary education are
more likely to go for unpaid work and women with post-secondary education are more likely
to do wage work. This fits in well with our assumptions as women with low education tend to
have lesser bargaining power and they are more likely to go for unpaid work. Married women
have 31.2% higher chances of running their own business and they are 6% less likely to engage
in unpaid work as compared to single girls. This might indicate that post-marriage, women
have better access to resources to run a business. Single women are more likely to engage in
unpaid work. Results also show that divorced and widowed women are more likely to engage
in business, but chances are lower than those of married women. All in all, marital status is a
crucial determinant of the type of market work that women in the sample undertake. We will
look at this in detail ahead. Number of children play a critical role in terms of the time available
for women to work outside the house. Results indicate a child penalty as an extra child
decreases the probability of a woman to run her business by 0.05 and increases her probability
for wage work by 0.05. This reveals that running a business requires more labour-time
commitment as compared to wage work which is more casual in nature. Number of adult males
and females indicates the extra labour-time at the disposal of the household which can be
utilized at farm for own-use production or domestic work. An extra female in the household
decreases the chances of a woman to take up wage work and encourages her to run her business.
Summary of results:
Result I: woman who owns land is less likely to do unpaid work.
Result II: woman who owns land is less likely to go for wage work.
Result III: woman who owns land is more likely to run a business.
Hypotheses I and III hold true whereas Hypothesis II is rejected. This suggests that wage work
might not be as highly paid as we assumed it to be. In fact, a quick run through the survey
following up on International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO) codes reveal that
most of the wage work for women is relatively low-skilled such as “gardening, culinary and
agricultural work”, whereas business involves working as a “trade manager, salesperson etc”.
So low-skilled and the casual nature of wage work shows that it is not something that
empowered women (i.e., women who own land) look forward to.
6.2 Heterogeneous Analysis I: Single versus Joint Plot Ownership
To disentangle the effect of plot ownership, we now look at single and joint ownership of land.
This has important policy implications for land titling reforms, and it helps us better understand
the land dynamics. Table 4 reports the average marginal effects for sole ownership of land on
labour allocation choices for women. Results are quite similar to those seen above. Single plot
ownership for a woman increases her likelihood of running an enterprise and lowers her
chances of engaging in wage and unpaid work.
Table 5 shows the average marginal effects for joint ownership of plots on female labour
allocation decisions. It exposes how a woman who is a joint owner of a plot is more likely to
take up unpaid work. This shows that women who jointly own a plot with others might not be
as empowered as we think they are. Instead, they are coerced to carry out unpaid work. It is
important to reiterate here that unpaid work is defined as any helping somebody else with
his/her paid work or running their business without getting paid

6.3 Heterogeneous Analysis II: Married Women

We are now zooming in at married women. Holding marital status fixed at 1 = married, I
calculated Marginal Effects at Representative value (MER) of plot ownership on labour
allocation decisions for a married woman (Table 6). A married woman who owns a plot is
19.1% more likely to run a business and 11.4% less likely to opt for wage work and 4.8% less
likely to go for unpaid work.
Further unwinding plot ownership by single versus joint ownership, we see that the results hold
as before for a married woman who identifies herself as the single owner of plot(s) (Table 7).
Joint plot ownership, however, changes the dynamics as a married woman who is a joint owner
of a plot is 18.5% more likely to go for unpaid work! (Table 8)
Another set of estimates, Adjusted Predictions at Representative value (APR) illustrate that the
predicted probabilities are quite similar for overall plot ownership and single plot ownership
for married women. (Figures 4 and 5). In case of joint plot ownership, the flat predictive margin
for business at 95% confidence interval indicates that either joint plot ownership lacks the
prediction power, or it does not empower the woman enough to have an ‘autonomy effect’.

6.4 Robustness Checks

To overcome endogeneity issues with the land ownership variable, I use inherited land and see
how that impacts women’s labour allocation decisions. Assuming that inherited land is
exogenous in the sense that it does not depend on current income or employment for that matter,
this will serve as a robustness check for my results. Table 9 shows that on average, a woman
who inherits land has a 19.4% higher probability of running her own enterprise, 15.8% lower
chance of engaging in wage work and 6.2% less likely to take up unpaid work. Results are
consistent with actual plot ownership (Table 3) and therefore robust. So the land ownership
variable does not suffer from much endogeneity.

7. Limitations
In this section, I will acknowledge the limitations of this study. Starting from the data itself.
The data is not representative at the national or even the county level. The sample size is too
small and thus it fails to capture any significant relations with some important variables such
as membership of any informal savings or credit club. Although savings/credit capacity is a
critical determinant of business activity, but I had to ultimately drop it out from my final
regressions. Missing values of some important variables also resulted in their exclusion from
the final regressions such as age. There are 299 missing values for age and 158 of those
individuals own plot. Naturally, I had to drop age.
Moving on to the empirical strategy that I have used and the endogeneity issues associated with
it. An omitted variable that affects both female land ownership and work outside the house will
be problematic. For example, a more progressive household might have higher female land
shares and greater probability for the female to run her own enterprise. Another potential source
of endogeneity is the measurement error. As discussed in the Data section, land ownership does
not refer to the official land registry title deed, instead it is more of a perceived ownership, and
it may suffer from measurement error. Another issue is that of simultaneity or reverse causality,
it might be the case that running a business leads to owning a parcel through higher earnings
or savings channel. Some of the previous studies such as Allendorf (2007), Doss (2006), Deere
et al. (2004) have had endogeneity issues. Others have used various techniques: instrumental
variables such as exogenous shocks (Brown, 2009), or exogenous land policy reform that
affects individuals heterogeneously (Heath & Tan, 2020), or using ingenious empirical
methods like inverse probability weighting with propensity score matching (Mishra & Sam,
2016) to overcome endogeneity. The sample I am using is not representative at the county level
and therefore does not have sampling weights, so I cannot use matching to obtain valid
estimates of the treatment effect. Owing to the small sample size, I cannot aggregate results at
a higher sampling unit the way Peterman (2011) does. I am using an observational study, so I
can neither use a simple difference-in-difference strategy to churn out treatment effects. My
best bet was to use inherited land, as it is likely to be exogenous.
With a larger, representative sample or even with another round of this survey, we can derive
useful insights. With detailed time use data on other activities such as subsistence farming,
future researchers can look into labour-time shares allocated to each productive activity. Land
data can also be further enriched by adding questions pertaining to land size and soil conditions
etc. Lastly, data on labour allocations and preferences would be particularly useful to establish
causality. It would be interesting to see whether women prefer to work or would they rather
spend more time in leisure with greater autonomy.

8. Conclusion
In this research, I look at how land ownership affects labour supply through the autonomy
channel. In essence, how bargaining power plays out in the intrahousehold dynamics and how
a woman’s decision-making ability leads her to making a labour allocation of her choice. An
interesting extension to this study could be to look at how other proxies of bargaining power
such as a male first child or number of male children affect labour allocation decisions.
This study has interesting policy implications for land reforms as well as titling programs. It
shows that joint plot ownership is not as empowering for women as it may seem. So, programs
for joint tilting should be introduced with caution.
Even correlations between female land ownership and women’s labour supply decisions are
interesting because an intervention such as. a business skills training program for microfinance
clients could potentially increase a woman’s chances of running a successful enterprise, raising
her autonomy within the household, and leading her to bargain her share of land within the
household. So policies, reforms and interventions may have micro effects that alter the
intrahousehold dynamics which lead to macro-level general equilibrium effects.
 9. Appendix
Table 1 Summary Statistics

Male Female Total

(N = 843) (N = 902) (N = 1745)
Main job
None 116 (23.5%) 197 (33.5%) 314 (29.0%)
Unpaid 27 (5.5%) 34 (5.8%) 61 (5.6%)
Wage 198 (40.1%) 141 (24.0%) 339 (31.3%)
Business 153 (31.0%) 216 (36.7%) 369 (34.1%)
Plot Owner
No 563 (66.8%) 656 (72.7%) 1220 (69.9%)
Yes 280 (33.2%) 246 (27.3%) 526 (30.1%)
Single plot ownership
No 77 (27.5%) 78 (31.7%) 155 (29.5%)
Yes 203 (72.5%) 168 (68.3%) 371 (70.5%)
Joint plot ownership
No 202 (72.1%) 166 (67.5%) 368 (70.0%)
Yes 78 (27.9%) 80 (32.5%) 158 (30.0%)
Education
None 17 (3.5%) 74 (12.6%) 91 (8.5%)
Primary 302 (61.9%) 347 (59.3%) 650 (60.5%)
Secondary 128 (26.2%) 115 (19.7%) 243 (22.6%)
Post-secondary 41 (8.4%) 49 (8.4%) 90 (8.4%)
Marital Status
Married 275 (47.3%) 355 (53.1%) 630 (50.4%)
No longer married 39 (6.7%) 90 (13.5%) 129 (10.3%)
Never Married 268 (46.0%) 223 (33.4%) 492 (39.3%)
Credit/Savings Club
No 324 (66.4%) 331 (56.6%) 656 (61.1%)
Yes 164 (33.6%) 254 (43.4%) 418 (38.9%)
No. of Children
Mean (SD) 1.92 (1.48) 1.96 (1.46) 1.94 (1.47)
Min, Max 0.0, 6.0 0.0, 6.0 0.0, 6.0
No. of Adult Females
Mean (SD) 1.26 (0.74) 1.55 (0.76) 1.41 (0.76)
Min, Max 0.0, 4.0 0.0, 4.0 0.0, 4.0
No. of Adult Males
Mean (SD) 1.35 (0.83) 0.99 (0.78) 1.17 (0.83)
Min, Max 0.0, 4.0 0.0, 4.0 0.0, 4.0
Wealth Index quantile
High 270 (32.6%) 310 (34.8%) 580 (33.7%)
Middle 279 (33.7%) 295 (33.1%) 574 (33.4%)
Low 278 (33.6%) 286 (32.1%) 565 (32.9%)
County
Kiambu 270 (32.1%) 281 (31.2%) 551 (31.6%)
Machakos 304 (36.1%) 330 (36.6%) 635 (36.4%)
Muranga 268 (31.8%) 291 (32.3%) 559 (32.0%)

Standard errors in parentheses

*
p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001
Table 2 Mlogit estimates for Female Plot Ownership
VARIABLES F1 F2 F3
unpaid wage business unpaid wage business unpaid wage business

Plot Owner = 1, Yes -2.987*** -0.959*** -0.580** -2.854*** -1.080*** -0.292 -1.911* -0.355 0.687*
(1.023) (0.269) (0.264) (1.062) (0.299) (0.273) (1.041) (0.367) (0.355)
Education = 1, Primary 1.509 1.297*** 1.031*** 1.715* 0.851* 0.956*** 1.972* 0.894** 1.119***
(1.048) (0.420) (0.312) (1.001) (0.438) (0.350) (1.023) (0.434) (0.381)
Education = 2, Secondary 1.513 1.491*** 1.635*** 1.466 0.948* 1.353*** 1.604 0.678 1.014**
(1.107) (0.502) (0.388) (1.076) (0.512) (0.413) (1.085) (0.506) (0.435)
Education = 3, Post-secondary 2.093* 2.517*** 1.672*** 2.398* 2.187*** 1.558*** 2.907** 2.279*** 1.611***
(1.235) (0.554) (0.483) (1.247) (0.572) (0.505) (1.266) (0.589) (0.562)
Marital Status = 1, Married -0.132 1.601*** 1.987*** -0.0832 1.103*** 2.077*** 0.238 1.267*** 2.465***
(0.415) (0.310) (0.331) (0.488) (0.341) (0.346) (0.515) (0.368) (0.375)
Marital Status = 2, No longer married -12.17*** 2.054*** 2.542*** -13.69*** 1.517*** 1.981*** -14.58*** 0.939* 1.377***
(0.528) (0.459) (0.451) (0.502) (0.462) (0.450) (0.571) (0.498) (0.495)
Number of Children -0.194 0.163* -0.195** -0.0844 0.227** -0.140
(0.154) (0.0984) (0.0901) (0.162) (0.107) (0.0955)
No. of Adult Males 0.0388 -0.00526 0.0617 -0.247 -0.146 -0.118
(0.226) (0.177) (0.153) (0.256) (0.182) (0.160)
No. of Adult Females 0.128 -0.716*** -0.192 0.426 -0.602*** -0.111
(0.317) (0.205) (0.173) (0.361) (0.217) (0.191)
Wealth Index quantile = 1, high 1.935*** 0.636* 1.665*** 0.671 -0.412 0.225
(0.712) (0.333) (0.302) (0.747) (0.415) (0.371)
Wealth Index quantile = 2, middle 2.600*** 0.585** 1.308*** 1.792** -0.198 0.316
(0.690) (0.298) (0.296) (0.722) (0.345) (0.334)
County = 1, Kiambu -0.152 0.227 1.051***
(0.501) (0.360) (0.337)
County = 2, Machakos -3.018*** -2.037*** -2.182***
(0.841) (0.441) (0.428)
Constant -2.517** -2.417*** -2.275*** -4.401*** -1.070 -2.717*** -3.733*** -0.117 -2.034***
(1.069) (0.502) (0.375) (1.318) (0.763) (0.606) (1.391) (0.803) (0.701)
Observations 584 584 584 576 576 576 576 576 576
HH-level controls NO NO NO YES YES YES YES YES YES
County controls NO NO NO NO NO NO YES YES YES
Table 3 Average Marginal Effects (AME) of Female plot Ownership on Labour Allocations

unpaid wage business

Plot Ownership
No (Base category) 0 0 0
(.) (.) (.)
Yes -0.0569*** -0.105* 0.176***
(0.0144) (0.0502) (0.0521)
Education
None (Base category) 0 0 0
(.) (.) (.)
Primary 0.0441* 0.0340 0.107
(0.0209) (0.0563) (0.0560)
Secondary 0.0320 0.0138 0.113
(0.0241) (0.0649) (0.0646)
Post-secondary 0.0562 0.230** 0.0298
(0.0392) (0.0862) (0.0788)
Marital Satus
Married -0.0603* 0.0245 0.312***
(0.0271) (0.0465) (0.0411)
No longer married -0.100*** 0.0933 0.163*
(0.0230) (0.0733) (0.0666)
Never Married 0 0 0
(Base category) (.) (.) (.)

nchild -0.00449 0.0502*** -0.0447**

(0.00660) (0.0133) (0.0138)
nadult_male -0.00726 -0.00991 -0.00473
(0.0103) (0.0259) (0.0260)

nadult_female 0.0286 -0.0926** 0.0263

(0.0147) (0.0289) (0.0297)
Wealth Index
high 0.0208 -0.0964 0.0756
(0.0187) (0.0581) (0.0591)
middle 0.0743** -0.0879 0.0534
(0.0231) (0.0522) (0.0548)

Low (Base category) 0 0 0

(.) (.) (.)
County
Kiambu -0.0330 -0.0836 0.189***
(0.0246) (0.0481) (0.0498)
Machakos -0.0752*** -0.145* -0.200***
(0.0224) (0.0592) (0.0577)
Muranga (Base category) 0 0 0
(.) (.) (.)
Standard errors in parentheses
*
p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001
Table 4 Average Marginal Effects (AME) of Single Plot Ownership on Labour Allocations for Females

Unpaid Wage Business

Single Plot Ownership -0.0677*** -0.112* 0.118*

Yes (0.0107) (0.0461) (0.0492)

Standard errors in parentheses

*
p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001

Table 5 Average Marginal Effects (AME) of Joint Plot Ownership on Labour Allocations for Females

Unpaid Wage Business

Joint Plot Ownership
Yes 0.101*** -0.0103 0.0771
(0.0169) (0.0577) (0.0662)

Standard errors in parentheses

*
p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.00

Table 6 Marginal Effects at Representative value (MER) of Plot Ownership for Married Woman (Marital Status=1)

Unpaid Wage Business

Plot Ownership
Yes -0.0476** -0.114* 0.191***
(0.0152) (0.0480) (0.0527)

Standard errors in parentheses

*
p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001

Table 7 Marginal Effects at Representative value (MER) of Single Plot Ownership for Married Woman (Marital Status=1)

Unpaid Wage Business

Single Plot Ownership
=1, Yes -0.0530*** -0.115** 0.134**
(0.0153) (0.0444) (0.0520)

Standard errors in parentheses

*
p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001

Table 8 Marginal Effects at Representative value (MER) of Joint Plot Ownership for Married Woman (Marital Status=1)

Unpaid Wage Business

Joint Plot Ownership
=1, Yes 0.185*** -0.0294 0.0100
(0.0369) (0.0527) (0.0654)

Standard errors in parentheses

*
p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001
Table 9 Average Marginal Effects of Inherited Land for Women

Unpaid Wage Business

Inherited Land 0 0 0
No (Base category) (.) (.) (.)

Yes -0.0615*** -0.158*** 0.194***

(0.00952) (0.0394) (0.0526)
Education
None (Base category) 0 0 0
(.) (.) (.)

Primary 0.0434* 0.0280 0.112*

(0.0209) (0.0577) (0.0569)

Secondary 0.0319 0.00139 0.121

(0.0244) (0.0661) (0.0667)

Post-secondary 0.0592 0.208* 0.0426

(0.0405) (0.0873) (0.0795)
Marital Status
Married -0.0743* 0.0201 0.323***
(0.0296) (0.0472) (0.0403)

No longer married -0.116*** 0.0366 0.240***

(0.0261) (0.0648) (0.0592)

Never Married (Base category) 0 0 0

(.) (.) (.)

No. of Children -0.00535 0.0501*** -0.0433**

(0.00690) (0.0135) (0.0136)

No. of Adult Males -0.00370 -0.00971 -0.00890

(0.00935) (0.0247) (0.0261)

No. of Adult Females 0.0303* -0.0948*** 0.0233

(0.0140) (0.0274) (0.0300)
Wealth Index
high 0.0200 -0.108 0.0853
(0.0186) (0.0579) (0.0587)

middle 0.0733** -0.1000 0.0650

(0.0230) (0.0513) (0.0548)

low (Base category) 0 0 0

(.) (.) (.)
County
Kiambu -0.0268 -0.0395 0.141**
(0.0266) (0.0511) (0.0528)

Machakos -0.0778*** -0.149** -0.174**

(0.0215) (0.0502) (0.0530)

Muranga (Base category) 0 0 0

(.) (.) (.)
Standard errors in parentheses
*
p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001
 Figure 1 Gender-Disaggregated Plot Ownership by Household Wealth Index

Plot Ownership by Wealth Index

0.41
Low
Wealth Index Quantile

0.28

0.30
Medium
0.34

0.28
High
0.38

0.00 0.10 0.20 0.30 0.40 0.50

Proportion of plot owners

Female Male

Figure 2 Gender-Disaggregated Single Plot Ownership by Household Wealth Index

Single Plot Ownership by Wealth Index

0.30
Low
Wealth Index Quantile

0.13

0.33
Medium
0.38

0.38
High
0.50

0.00 0.10 0.20 0.30 0.40 0.50 0.60

Proportion of plot owners

Female Male
 Figure 3 Gender-Disaggregated Joint Plot Ownership by Household Wealth Index

Joint Plot Ownership by Wealth Index

Wealth Index Quantile 0.65

Low
0.68

0.28
Medium
0.25

0.08
High
0.08

0.00 0.10 0.20 0.30 0.40 0.50 0.60 0.70 0.80

Proportion of plot owners

Female Male

Figure 4 Adjusted Predictions at Representative value (APR) for Married Women Who Own Plot
Figure 5 Adjusted Predictions at Representative value (APR) for Married Women Who Solely Own Plot

Figure 6 Adjusted Predictions at Representative value (APR) for Married Women Who Jointly Own Plot
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