Seasonally, Labor Scheduling, and Agricultural Intensification in the Nigerian Savanna

Human labor is the primary factor of production in indigenous agricultural systems, yet the organization and scheduling of labor, and effect of agricultural intensification on these processes, remain poorly understood. While most theoretical and empirical studies have emphasized overall labor input and efficiency, this study of the Kofyar of Nigeria analyzes the scheduling and mobilization of labor in ecological context. Detailed labor diaries for a sample of households over an entire agricultural cycle reveal intricate schedules that balance the labor demands of a variable crop complex with a set of complementary mechanisms for mobilizing labor. With rising population density and market impetus, the Kofyar have increased gross labor inputs, adjusted crop mixes to reduce weekly fluctuations in labor, and extended the agricultural season. Labor demands are met by three social mechanisms of labor mobilization, which offer varying sizes of labor pool, degree of flexibility, and type of compensation.     

Woman of the house: gender, architecture, and ideology in Dorset prehistory

The role of women in Paleoeskimo households has rarely been examined. Careful application of analogies to Inuit culture reveal that there are both similarities and differences in how Late Dorset and Inuit gender roles are expressed in household organization. On an ideological level, Late Dorset women probably had a similar role to that of women in Inuit society, as the soul of the house and an important intermediary between hunters and the souls of the animals they hunted. On a day-to-day basis, however, Late Dorset women seem to have shared more of their labor as members of dual family households than did Inuit women, as members of nuclear family units. The increased importance of small, trapped game such as foxes and rabbits during Late Dorset times (Darwent 2001) may have contributed to the need for shared labor. Finally, women, in their role as keepers of the hearth, were important in maintaining community ties at seasonal aggregation sites dominated by long houses and external hearth rows.     

Unemployment and labor migration in rural Galicia (Spain)

This article focuses on the difficulty of entering into—and literally getting back and forth to—the waged labor market for adolescent and young adult workers from rural parts of Galicia, a region that has experienced a prolonged history of persistently high levels of unemployment. Unemployment is one of the most serious issues facing Spain, other countries of the EU, and states all over the world. In Spain, for the population of workers under 30, this problem is at staggeringly high levels that have reached 50 % plus in the last few years of the current crisis but has been longstanding. So, too, has labor migration to and from rural Galician households. This article takes a broad approach to the analysis of labor mobility, including daily commuting as well as longer distance and longer duration labor migration. It considers the role of state and EU policies over time in instituting, supporting, or discouraging different geographical trajectories and forms of movement for young adult “wage seekers” from rural Galician households.     

Month of birth, socioeconomic background and development in Swedish men

Season of birth has been shown to correlate with many aspects of somatic and mental disorders, development and social adaptation (so-called 'birth-date effects'). In a sample of young Swedish men, corresponding roughly to a one-year birth cohort, the results of intelligence tests, psychologists' ratings of psychological function, school achievement, body height, weight and self-reported health during childhood, were found to be correlated with month of birth, and--more strongly--father's socioeconomic status. The results were more favourable for men who were born during March-May (the period of highest birth rate), and whose fathers were of higher socioeconomic status, than for those born in November and December (the period of lowest birth rate), and whose fathers were in the lower socioeconomic group. It seems reasonable to conclude, from this study and previously reported findings, that these so-called 'birth-date effects' are determined by varying and often interacting biological and psychosocial factors. Among these factors, the light-induced entrainment of circadian and annual rhythms in the fetus and/or infant seems to be of pivotal importance. The organization of children into one-year age classes therefore produces an unfair lack of equality of possibilities.     

Agricultural Intensification, Market Participation, and Household Demography in the Peruvian Andes

The causes of agricultural intensification in a peasant community in the north central Andes are explored using a methodology derived from the tradition of Systems Ecology. Hypotheses derived from different research traditions??mainly development economics and anthropology??regarding the causes of intensification are integrated and evaluated for their relative effects. It is found that among the variables, household size is better at explaining the degree of intensity with which labor and technology are employed. The results suggest that technologically-driven agricultural intensification is generally forced upon households by the diminishing returns of their labor, and that this process is normally accompanied by increased financial debt for those peasant households who remain in agriculture and do not completely migrate to regional urban centers.     

Garden labor exchange among the Ye'kwana

The Ye'kwana Indians of southern Venezuela engage in extensive garden labor exchange. Approximately 40% of a household's labor is committed to gardens owned by other households. Owing to a number of situational constraints inherent in Ye'kwana household organization and garden ownership, individuals are not free to benefit other individuals directly. For example, if an individuals labors in another household's garden he benefits all members of the household who feed from that garden. Knowledge of these constraints led to the formulation and succesful testing of a simple inclusive fitness model that predicts that mean relatedness between households is correlated with the intensity and balance in exchange. In addition, it is argued that the Ye'kwana system of garden labor exchange is a form of reciprocity biased by kinship.     

Agricultural practices and household organization in a Japanese pioneer community of lowland Bolivia

This article describes the colonization process of the Japanese pioneer farmers in the Bolivian subtropical lowlands. Quantitative data for each of the farm households that can be matched for comparison between the initial phase of colonization and a later phase provide the basis for an examination of a reciprocal relationship between household organization and successively introduced agricultural practices. Two hypotheses are tested: (a) pioneer agriculture stimulates the formation of large family households to cope with an assumed labor shortage; and (b) existing variation in household organization produces variation in agricultural practices. The analysis reveals that the size of swidden farming in the initial phase and the size of permanent field cultivation in the latter phase both relate positively to the size of the male labor force. Despite the significant advantage of a large family household for providing free labor during rapid agricultural growth, a diachronic analysis does not support the hypothesis that the pioneer condition stimulates adaptive social change toward the formation of large families. Rather, the data indicate that changes in household composition have major effects on the size of cropland and the transformation from swidden farming to mechanized cultivation. Underlying mechanisms of agricultural change are further explored, and the implications for a colonization project are discussed.     

Changing Realities—Perspectives on Balinese Rice Cultivation

This paper discusses issues of agrarian change in south-central Bali. The proximity to urban areas, especially the tourist centers along the southern coast, provides many off-farm employment opportunities for small-scale farming households. Although rice farming continues, for many households it has become a side business. The flexible nature of rice farming in terms of labor input and available casual off-farm work allows farming households to allocate their available labor to a variety of on-farm and off-farm income generating activities. The subak which unites farmers in the irrigation and cultivation of the rice crop plays an important role in supporting this flexibility. Still, the future of rice farming and the organization behind it looks rather dim with a younger generation unwilling to work in the “mud” and little appreciation of the many benefits the subak provides not only to the farming but to the wider community.     

Food-Sharing Networks in Lamalera, Indonesia: Status, Sharing, and Signaling

Costly signaling has been proposed as a possible mechanism to explain food sharing in foraging populations. This sharing-as-signaling hypothesis predicts an association between sharing and status. Using exponential random graph modeling (ERGM), this prediction is tested on a social network of between-household food-sharing relationships in the fishing and sea-hunting village of Lamalera, Indonesia. Previous analyses (Nolin 2010) have shown that most sharing in Lamalera is consistent with reciprocal altruism. The question addressed here is whether any additional variation may be explained as sharing-as-signaling by high-status households. The results show that high-status households both give and receive more than other households, a pattern more consistent with reciprocal altruism than costly signaling. However, once the propensity to reciprocate and household productivity are controlled, households of men holding leadership positions show greater odds of unreciprocated giving when compared to households of non-leaders. This pattern of excessive giving by leaders is consistent with the sharing-as-signaling hypothesis. Wealthy households show the opposite pattern, giving less and receiving more than other households. These households may reciprocate in a currency other than food or their wealth may attract favor-seeking behavior from others. Overall, status covariates explain little variation in the sharing network as a whole, and much of the sharing observed by high-status households is best explained by the same factors that explain sharing by other households. This pattern suggests that multiple mechanisms may operate simultaneously to promote sharing in Lamalera and that signaling may motivate some sharing by some individuals even within sharing regimes primarily maintained by other mechanisms.     

Trends in Educational Attainment by Race/Ethnicity, Nativity, and Sex in the United States, 1989-2005

Despite the importance of education for shaping individuals' life chances, little research has examined trends and differences in educational attainment for detailed demographic subpopulations in the United States. We use labor market segmentation and cohort replacement theories, linear regression methods, and data from the National Health Interview Survey to understand educational attainment by race/ethnicity, nativity, birth cohort, and sex between 1989 and 2005 in the United States. There have been significant changes in educational attainment over time. In support of the cohort replacement theory, we find that across cohorts, females have enjoyed greater gains in education than men, and for some race/ethnic groups, recent cohorts of women average more years of education than comparable men. And in support of labor market segmentation theories, foreign-born Mexican Americans continue to possess relatively low levels of educational attainment. Our results can aid policymakers in identifying vulnerable populations, and form the base from which to better understand changing disparities in education.     

Mobility strategies and the importance of community ties: former pulp and paper workers in Miramichi,New Brunswick

This article explores how global shifts in capital, production, the labor market, and its segmentation relate to mobility strategies and community ties in a specific local context. Mobility strategies or the refusal to be mobile are, at times, used in order to maintain households in communities that have seen their labor market constrict. Decisions about mobility are not purely about economic rationality. In the mobility strategies employed by former pulp and paper workers from Miramichi, New Brunswick, Canada, resistance to mobility is due to community and familial ties to place. Such local commitments may take precedence over, but are clearly impacted by, the ever-shifting tides of global capital.     

Herding Strategies of the Datoga Pastoralists of Tanzania: Is Household Labor a Limiting Factor

Datoga herding follows a cyclical pattern depending on the availability of grazing and water. This analysis focuses on two questions: (a) Is the herding strategy followed by individual households limited by the amount of labor available to that household? and (b) does the herding strategy followed by individual households influence the dynamics of cattle herds? The results show that the availability of labor on a household level does not influence either the herding strategies used by individual households, or the dynamics of cattle herds. This suggests that once minimum labor requirements are met, livestock productivity is insensitive to additional labor inputs.     

The Importance of Bushmeat in the Livelihoods of West African Cash-Crop Farmers Living in a Faunally-Depleted Landscape

Bushmeat is an important resource in the livelihoods of many rural communities in sub-Saharan Africa and may be a crucial safety-net for the most vulnerable households, especially during times of economic hardship. However, little is known about the impacts of wildlife depletion on these functions. This study quantifies the role of bushmeat in diversified rural household economies in a wildlife depleted forest-farm landscape in Ghana, assessing its importance overall, as well as differentiated by the relative vulnerability of households. Using repeat socioeconomic questionnaires (N=787) among 63 households over a one-year period, the following hypotheses were tested: (a) vulnerable households harvest more bushmeat; (b) bushmeat contributes a greater proportion of household production in vulnerable households; (c) bushmeat is more important for cash income than consumption in vulnerable households; and (d) bushmeat sales are more important for vulnerable households. The bushmeat harvest value averaged less than US$1.0 per day for 89% of households and comprised less than 7% of household production value. Household wealth and gender of the household head had little effect on the importance of bushmeat. However, bushmeat harvest and sales were highest during the agricultural lean season. Overall, most harvested bushmeat (64%) was consumed, enabling households to spend 30% less on meat/fish purchases. These findings suggest that, despite heavily depleted wildlife and diversified livelihoods, bushmeat continues to have an important role in rural livelihoods by acting as a safety net for income smoothing and reducing household expenditure during times of economic hardship.     

The Impact of Land Privatization on Cooperation in Farm Labor in Kenya

Establishing private property in land through registration and titling has been promoted in developing countries due to the anticipated benefits of private ownership in access to credit, productivity enhancing investments, and productivity gains. Evidence of such benefits is limited, however. In this paper, we examine a related question: What is the impact of privatization on cooperation in farm labor? Data collected in 2005 from Samburu District in Kenya is analyzed, comparing one community where land has been privatized to a second where land is communally held in a group ranch. It is hypothesized that households with title deeds are less likely to cooperate in farm labor than households without deeds. The hypothesis was confirmed, as the odds of cooperating in communal farm labor are 93.0% lower for households with deeds compared to those without. This effect has negative implications for collective action efforts in Siambu.     

Labor specialization and the formation of markets for food in a Shipibo subsistence economy

Traditionally, the Shipibo economy was subsistence-based with shifting cultivation supplying calories, principally in the form of plantains and root crops, while fishing and hunting provided animal proteins to the diet. Some men, who recently began producing rice for sale in regional markets, now allocate less time to wild food procurement. Moreover, this trend has been accompanied by the nucleation of households, a growing cash market for agricultural labor, and the intravillage sale of faunal foods. This paper shows that with cash cropping, some Shipibo now freely distribute less food to others in relation to the amount they produce. To account for this change, a theory is developed based on time allocation and patterns of economic behavior reported throughout the Amazon. This theory is then applied to explain specialization and the formation of cash markets for food labor among the Shipibo.     

Effects on Household Labor of Temporary Out-migration by Male Household Heads in Nicaragua and Peru: an Analysis of Spot-check Time Allocation Data Using Mixed-effects Models

When adult males are temporarily away from the household, observational evidence suggests cross-cultural and intra-cultural variation in the effects of their absence on the labor of other household members. In subsistence-based economies, we predict that other adolescent or older members will work more in essential production activities that otherwise would be performed by the missing men. We test this hypothesis using spot-check time allocation datasets from rural Nicaragua and Peru and the methodology of mixed-effects statistical models. In Nicaragua, we find that the absence of male household heads rarely necessitates substitute labor by household co-residents, apparently because men typically time their absences to coincide with the non-peak agricultural season. In Peru, the absence of male household heads results in increased men’s work by co-residents only under unusual circumstances, as households apparently rely on other strategies to mitigate for the loss of labor. In addition to the comparative empirical analysis of the two cases, we show how mixed-effects models allow for individual heterogeneity and data structures that confound more familiar statistical techniques and occasionally produce spurious results. Mixed-effects modeling techniques will be necessary if we are to realize the analytic potential of the extensive, standardized time allocation datasets gathered by anthropologists.     

Women and development: A highland New Guinea example

This paper presents an analysis of household variables and their relationship to success in cash cropping among the Gainj of Madang Province, Papua New Guinea. Censuses and household surveys from 1978, the year in which cash cropping began, and 1983 provide data that show different patterns of change in household structure for more and less commercially successful households. The results illustrate the importance of women's labor in economic development and the dynamic nature of the relationship between household structure and economic development.     

Nutritional status of Ribeirinhos in Brazil and the nutrition transition

Anthropometric and household data (size, composition, economic activity) were collected from a population of Ribeirinhos living in a rural setting in the eastern Amazon. Data are compared to international reference standards and to other Amazonian populations with the goals of increasing our understanding of the Amazon's largest ethnic group and identifying the relationship between changes in subsistence strategies and nutritional status. Data on height, weight, skinfolds, and circumferences were collected from 471 adults and subadults. The population showed a high degree of stunting with an average HAZ below -2.0 for all age groups over 3 years, and 60% of adult men and 70% of adult women were stunted. Wasting was rare. Average skinfold thicknesses and upper-arm muscle area were near or below average but within the normal range compared to the reference standard, indicating adequate energy and protein stores. Thirty-one percent of males and 29% of females were overweight/obese, and the highest average BMIs were found among men and women in their 40s. Adult males who participated in wage labor had higher weights, BMIs, and UMA values, and were more likely to be overweight and obese compared with those who did not work in wage-labor jobs. Children of fathers who worked in wage labor had higher BMI and UMA values, but there was no significant effect on the nutritional status of other adults in these same households. Signs of the nutrition transition were most noticeable among adult males involved in wage labor because of changes in their diet and activity patterns.     

Evaluating the role of livelihood assets in suitable livelihood strategies: Protocol for anti-poverty policy in the Eastern Tibetan Plateau,China

Although numerous studies have been conducted on the relationship between livelihood assets and strategies, only a few quantitative studies exist on the topic for anti-poverty policies with regard to the Tibetan Plateau. This study investigated 357 households in the upper reaches of the Dadu River watershed in the Eastern Tibetan Plateau, China, using the participatory rural appraisal method. Then, applying a multinomial logistic regression model, we quantitatively analyzed the relationship between livelihood assets and livelihood strategies, the findings of which have implications for local agricultural policy interventions. The preliminary results indicate that of the four classifications of livelihood strategies used in this study, the main livelihood strategy is that of the non-farming-dependent household type (i.e., Type III in our study) that combines agricultural and non-farm activities or practices self-employment for wages. There are significant differences in the livelihood assets owned by households with different livelihood strategies. Human, natural, and financial assets have significant influences on livelihood strategies, and the choice of livelihood strategy varies by livelihood assets. Further, with improvements in household labor capacity and cash income per capita, the livelihood strategies of non-agricultural and non-farming households may shift away from agriculture, while an increase in farmland cultivated per capita, cash income per capita, and household labor capacity may encourage households to adopt agriculture-dependent livelihood strategies. These findings contribute to research on livelihood and related development strategies and anti-poverty policies in not only the Eastern Tibetan Plateau but also other regions with similar livelihood strategies.     

Risk aversion,time preference and health production: Theory and empirical evidence from Cambodia

This paper quantifies the relationship between risk aversion and discount rates on the one hand and height and weight on the other. It studies this link in the context of poor households in Cambodia. Evidence is based on an original dataset that contains both experimental measures of risk taking and impatience along with anthropometric measurements of children and adults. The aim of the paper is to (i) explore the importance of risk and time preferences in explaining undernutrition and (ii) compare the evidence stemming from poor households to strikingly similar findings from industrialized countries. It uses an inter-generational approach to explain observed correlations in adults and children that is inspired by the height premium on labor markets. Parents can invest in the health capital of their child to increase future earnings and their consumption when old: better nutrition during infancy translates into better human capital and better wages, and ultimately better financial means to take care of elderly parents. However this investment is subject to considerable uncertainty, since parents neither perfectly foresee economic conditions when the child starts earning nor fully observe the ability to transform nutritional investments into long-term health capital. As a result, risk taking households have taller and heavier children. Conversely, impatience does not affect child health. In the case of adults, only weight and the body mass index (BMI), but not height, are positively and moderately correlated with risk taking and impatience.