Focusing on overall labor force participation, Table 2 shows that the gap has slightly dropped over time, though the change is not significant. The gender gap fell in the northern region, but rose in urban areas,<sup>12</sup> and in central and southern regions. The gender gap in LFP is now largest in the Center of the country (which includes the Capital Region), followed by the West, and is 13 percentage points larger in urban areas compared to rural areas (20 vs. 7 percentage points). Gender differences are only slightly different across age groups, with gender differences being marginally larger among the 30-64 group (though this group experienced a significant decline in the LFP gap across years).

Next, we turn to the decomposition analysis results in Table 3. Columns (1), (2) and (3) consider paid labor force participation, while columns (4), (5), and (6) show results for overall labor force participation. Levels of education and household wealth are not associated with the gender gap in labor force participation. Rather, the gender gap in both types of labor force participation is entirely explained by differences in _returns_ to worker characteristics (i.e., by discrimination, social norms, or institutional constraints). Further, women benefit less than men in terms of their labor force participation from increased age (i.e., labor market experience), from living in an urban area and from having children in the household. They also face lower returns to being married. This may be because they are expected to work less and adopt or intensify their role as caregivers upon marriage—even given the same number of children—or generally have less control over whether they can work once they are married.

We delve deeper to understand the differences in LFP. Appendix Table 2 looks at the KOB decomposition by age. Columns (1), (2) and (3) show the decomposition results for those aged 15-29, confirming that here too, gender gaps are entirely driven by differences in returns. However, for adults aged 30-64—shown in columns (4), (5) and (6)—we note that 2.1 percentage points of the gap is driven by differences in endowments, in particular lower ownership of a vehicle and financial account.

We also look at LFP by urban/rural, and the results are illustrated in Appendix Table 3. In rural areas, differences in endowments are not correlated with the gender gap, but in urban areas, 3.1 percentage points of the overall 20 percentage point gender gap can be explained by differences in endowments. Similar to the results for older adults, we see that urban women’s lower financial account and vehicle ownership

> 12 One caveat is that areas denoted as urban/rural have changed for some enumeration areas in Burkina Faso over time. In the last LSMS done in 2014, the average urbanicity in the provinces was about 13 percent, and it rose slightly to 15 percent by 2019. Appendix Table 1 shows the proportion of urban population by province in 2014 and 2019. However, there are some provinces that faced a larger increase in urban population than other provinces. Both 2014 and 2019 surveys used a two-stage sampling method, but the enumeration areas picked were different in each of those samples, which does not allow us to distinguish whether the changes in LFP or earnings in urban and rural areas across time were due to more people moving to urban areas, or due to rural areas transforming to urban areas.

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