**18**

# **4.2.4 Modes of land acquisition**

To provide further evidence that part of the relationship between noncognitive skills and incomeearning operates through a higher ability to negotiate access to the requisite inputs within the household, we differentiate between land that was inherited or received as a gift, and land that was bought or exchanged. If self-esteem does operate through negotiation over land, it should operate through bought or exchanged land, rather than through inherited or gifted land (such as a marriage gift). This is because noncognitive skills should matter for one’s current ability to negotiate acquisition or exchange of land, but less so for inheritance, which is primarily determined by birth order and sibling composition.

This is precisely what we test in Table 10, where we interact self-esteem with a categorical variable equal to zero if the woman does not control any land in the household, and which takes separate values depending on the way land was acquired. Although due to the weakness of land markets discussed above only a small portion of land is bargained over- with over 70 percent of land being inherited-we are still able to detect significant differences by mode of land acquisition. In Table 10, self-esteem coefficients now show the battle of the sexes for couples where the woman does not control any land.

**Table 10:** Female income-earning and self-esteem, with plot status

||(1)<br>Income-e|(2)<br>arning in agr|(3)<br>iculture (|(4)<br>female)|
|---|---|---|---|---|
||Export-ori|ented crops|All|crops|
|Self-esteem (fem)|<br>0.03<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>|<br>0.01|<br>0.02<sup>_∗∗_</sup>|<br>-0.00|
||(0.01)|(0.00)|(0.01)|(0.01)|
|Self-esteem (male)|-0.03<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>|-0.01|-0.03<sup>_∗∗_</sup>|-0.01|
||(0.01)|(0.01)|(0.01)|(0.01)|
|All her plots inherited/gifted||0.22<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>||0.23<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>|
|||(0.04)||(0.04)|
|Not all her plots inherited/gifted||0.25<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>||0.25<sup>_∗∗_</sup>|
|||(0.08)||(0.10)|
|All her plots inherited/gifted_×_Self-esteem (fem)||0.05||0.06<sup>_∗_</sup>|
|||(0.04)||(0.04)|
|Not all her plots inherited/gifted_×_Self-esteem (fem)||0.22<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup><br>(0.07)||0.21<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup><br>(0.08)|
|Outcome mean|0.06|0.06|0.09|0.09|
|Self-esteem p-value (inherited)||0.10||0.09|
|<br>Self-esteem p-value (bought)||0.00||0.01|
|<br>R-squared|0.045|0.173|0.031|0.120|
|Observations|1511|1511|1511|1511|

Note: Robust standard errors are reported in parentheses. All regressions include village fixed effects and the controls listed in Table 1. Self-esteem measures are corrected for acquiescence bias. Significance levels are denoted as follows: * p<0.10, ** p<0.05, *** p<0.01.

Interestingly, in couples where the wife does not control any land, income-earning in both agriculture and export-oriented agriculture does not correlate with male or female self-esteem. However her self-esteem correlates positively with her (export) crop income-earning if she controls land in the household. This correlation is significantly greater when the woman manages land that was bought or exchanged, rather than received through inheritance or gifts. For these women, a one standard deviation increase in self-esteem increases the likelihood that they earn