In Simple Words
Consider a village day-labor market where men can do heavy physical construction while women primarily handle domestic chores. Men who demand higher minimum wages for casual sorting work often lack physical strength for heavy labor or face urgent cash shortages, leading to lower output; women, whose outside activities align closer with manual sorting, display no such negative skill selection when demanding higher wages.
Casual workers sorting beans in rural Malawi
- Men
- Comparison group
- Women
- 0.76 more units sorted per day
Observed group averages, not a randomized gender effect. One unit is about 800 grams. The gap does not identify why minimum acceptable pay differs.
See source →Research question
Male and female casual laborers face different alternative economic opportunities and household liquidity constraints. These structural differences alter how reservation wages signal worker ability in rural developing country labor markets.
Participants
N = 689 participants (66.5% female, 33.5% male) across 1,875 daily decisions in rural Malawi.
Study Design
Gender-stratified field experiment measuring daily willingness to accept (WTA) and piece-rate task productivity across agricultural seasons.
Results
Women accept lower reservation rates (WTA is 2.3 to 3.0 MWK lower for women, p < 0.01), sort 0.76 more units per day, and make 0.16 fewer errors than men. The negative selection effect is driven exclusively by men, where a 10 MWK higher minimum WTA is associated with sorting 0.20 to 0.50 fewer units per day (p < 0.05); women display no significant selection relationship.
Takeaway
Evaluate gender-specific outside labor opportunities and household cash demands when designing targeted piece-rate incentive contracts.