ECONOMIC GROWTH CENTER
                                
                         YALE UNIVERSITY
                                
                                
                         P.O. Box 208269
                New Haven, Connecticut 06520-8269
                                
                                
                                
                                
                 CENTER DISCUSSION PAPER NO. 803
                                
                                
                                
                                
        WOMEN'S ROLE IN THE AGRICULTURAL HOUSEHOLD:      
                  BARGAINING AND HUMAN CAPITAL





                         T.  Paul Schultz
                          Yale University

                           January 1999






     

   Note:  Center Discussion Papers are preliminary materials circulated to stimulate discussions and
          critical comments.

          Prepared for the Agriculture and Resource Economics Handbook, edited by Bruce Gardner
          and Gordon Rausser.  I have benefitted from the comments on an earlier draft by Ayal Kimhi,
          Agnes Quisumbing, John Strauss, and three anonymous referees.  Support for this research
          came from the Rockefeller Foundation grant for training and research in economics of the
          family in low income countries.     




                            Abstract
                                
This paper reviews the methods and empirical findings from economic analyses of women's
contribution to social welfare and the determinants of their human capital.  To understand better
women's roles in agricultural households, three themes have gained prominence in the economics
literature.  First is the conceptualization of the unified family as coordinator of production and
consumption over the lifecycle.  Second is the role of separability of production and consumption
decisions in the agricultural household that depends on the equivalence of hired and of family
labor and the existence of competitive factor markets.  Third, is the exploration of individualistic
Nash-bargaining or Pareto efficient collective coordination within the family that preserves the
distinct preferences of individuals to be expressed in behavioral variation across families.  The
changing bargaining power of men and women is traced primarily to the increasing investment in
women's human capital, in the forms of nutrition, health, schooling, mobility and family planning. 
This reduction in the gender gap in human capital is shown to be closely related to declines in
mortality, fertility, and population growth in most studied populations and may importantly affect
the intrahousehold distribution of resources.