Although its location on the edge of Lake Victoria enables a small fishing industry, Mara Region is primarily agricultural. The bulk of farming activity takes place over the main, long-rains season (the masika), which runs roughly from January to June. The two main crops cultivated in the villages in our study are maize and cassava. Maize has a fixed seasonal cycle of land preparation, planting, weeding, and harvesting, a cycle which is governed by the onset of the rains.<sup>11</sup> By contrast, cassava has no specific cultivation cycle and is grown throughout the year. Cassava harvesting occurs throughout the year, depending on household food needs. Households frequently diversify cultivation, intercropping the two staples with beans, sweet potatoes, and sorghum.

Before comparing labor reporting by survey design, we use the benchmark weekly visit data to provide some context. Households have an average of 6.4 members and are typically composed of about one-third children under 10, with membership 50/50 by gender. The average household cultivates 4.6 plots of about 1 acre each. These plots tend not to be located adjacent to the household’s dwelling, nor are they typically adjacent to each other. On average, households report their plots are located a 26-minute walk from the primary residence.<sup>12</sup> Most people aged 10 or above were engaged in household farm labor. Table 2 provides an overview of the activities of these household members in our sample according to the weekly visit data. Consistent with the agricultural character of the region, the most common activity was work on a household farm; 88 percent of people spent at least one day in this activity over the season. Paid work, whether agricultural or otherwise, was rare: only 16 percent of people engaged in any paid agricultural work for others, and 11 percent performed paid nonagricultural work. A large share of people spent at least some time collecting firewood and water. About a quarter spent at least one day in school, and slightly less than half were sick for at least one day over the season.

Table 2, column 2 shows the average number of days spent in a given activity, as reported through the weekly visits, conditional on the performance of any reported labor activity that week. While important, family farm labor was perhaps less frequent than might be expected: people spent an average of 1.88 days a week working on their household farms, conditional on the performance of any reported work that week. We show below that this does not necessarily imply a regular weekly work pattern. There is considerable irregularity and cyclicality in agricultural work. As suggested in a number of studies of farm labor in Sub-Saharan Africa (see the discussion in Arthi and Fenske 2016), we find that the agricultural workday typically lasts four or five hours.<sup>13</sup> It is much shorter than the hours spent in nonagricultural and market activities (such as paid nonagricultural work, non-agricultural household business, fishing, livestock keeping, and schooling), conditional on the performance of such work.

> 11 Our experiment was initiated at the beginning of the maize cycle, in January 2014, and followed respondents to the completion of the harvest in August–September. 12 The time to commute to and from plots is not included in any of the working times reported in this study. Households were explicitly instructed to exclude commuting time in reporting the time worked in farming activities. 13 Although some of the discrepancy between the true and assumed agricultural workday is a function of recall bias, the work reported by recall-surveyed individuals suggests that even they experience shorter agricultural workdays and fewer agricultural workdays per week than are typically assumed.

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