The Impact of Household Health Shocks on Female Time Allocation, Agricultural Labor Participation and Productivity in Rural Pakistan

Gissele Gajate Garrido, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

There have been few empirical studies, in particular for the developing world and the agricultural sector, on the impact of negative health shocks on household well-being. This research paper main objective is to measure the effect of household health shocks on female time allocation and agricultural labor participation in rural Pakistan. To deal with both the joint determination and the measurement error problem present in this study I use a wide range of co-variates found in the 2012 and 2013 Pakistan Rural Household Surveys, individual, year and district fixed effects. This paper improves on previous evidence by understanding the role of changes in female labor supply as an insurance mechanism and shedding light on adverse health shocks' non-monetary consequences. Increases in paid workload for women reduce time spent on household chores directly related to child quality. I show how these changes in time allocation affect the households’ overall well-being.