The Nexus between Gender, Collective Action for Public Goods, and Agriculture : Evidence from Malawi

Across the developing world, public
goods exert significant impacts on the local rural economy
in general and agricultural productivity and welfare
outcomes in particular. Economic and social-cultural
heterogeneity have, however, long been documented as
detrimental to collective capacity to provide public goods.
In particular, women are often under-represented in local
leadership and decision-making processes, as are young
adults and minority ethnic groups. While democratic
principles dictate that broad civic engagement by women and
other groups could improve the efficiency and effectiveness
of local governance and increase public goods provision, the
empirical evidence on these hypotheses is scant. This paper
develops a theoretical model highlighting the complexity of
constructing a "fair" schedule of individual
contributions, given heterogeneity in costs and benefits
that accrue to people depending, for instance, on their
gender, age, ethnicity, and education. The model
demonstrates that representative leadership and broad
participation in community organizations can mitigate the
negative impacts of heterogeneity on collective capacity to
provide public goods. Nationally-representative household
survey data from Malawi, combined with geospatial and
administrative information, are used to test this hypothesis
and estimate the relationship between collective capacity
for public goods provision and community median estimates of
maize yields and household consumption expenditures per
capita. The analysis shows that similarities between the
leadership and the general population, in terms of gender
and age, and active participation by women and young adults
in community groups alleviate the negative effects of
heterogeneity and increase collective capacity, which in
turn improves agricultural productivity and welfare.