ISA) project.<sup>20</sup> The IHS3 data were collected within a two-stage cluster sampling design, and are representative at the national, urban/rural, regional, and district levels, covering 12,271 households in 768 enumeration areas (EAs). The IHS3 instruments included Household, Agriculture, Fishery, and Community Questionnaires.

All sample households were administered the multi-topic Household Questionnaire that collected individual-disaggregated information on demographics, education, health, wage employment, nonfarm enterprises, anthropometrics, and control of income from non-farm income sources, as well as data on housing, food consumption, food and non-food expenditures, food security, and durable and agricultural asset ownership, among other topics. The sample households that were involved in agricultural activities (through ownership and/or cultivation of land, and/or ownership of livestock) were administered the Agriculture Questionnaire. The Agriculture Questionnaire solicited information on land areas, physical characteristics, labor and non-labor input use, and crop cultivation and production at the plot level, separately for the reference rainy and dry seasons.<sup>21</sup> The data allow for agricultural production estimates at the plot level and for the identification of the manager of the plot<sup>22</sup> , as well as household members that owned<sup>23</sup> and/or worked on each plot.<sup>24</sup> Handheld global positioning system (GPS)-based locations and land areas of the plots were recorded, permitting us to link household- and plotlevel data to outside geographic information system (GIS) databases.

The descriptive statistics and the results from the tests of mean differences by the gender of the plot manager are presented in Table 1. The full sample consists of 16,372 plots, 26% of them managed by females.<sup>25</sup> Table 1 clearly demonstrates the (unadjusted) gender gap: the 20 The lead author was the point person for the World Bank technical assistance towards the design and implementation of the IHS3 under the LSMS-ISA initiative, which is a household survey program established by a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to provide financial and technical support to governments in subSaharan Africa in the design and implementation of nationally-representative multi-topic panel household surveys - with a strong focus on agriculture (www.worldbank.org/lsms <u>isa). The IHS3 data and documentation are publicly</u> available through the LSMS website (www.worldbank.org/lsms).

21 A plot was defined as a continuous piece of land on which a unique crop or a mixture of crops is grown, under a uniform, consistent crop management system, not split by a path of more than one meter in width. Plot boundaries were defined in accordance with the crops grown and the operator.

22 For each plot, the following question was asked to identify the primary decision maker/manager: “Who in this household makes the decisions concerning crops to be planted, input use and the timing of cropping activities on this plot?” The questionnaire allowed for identification of one manager per plot, on whom individual-level information could be recovered from the Household Questionnaire.

23 For each plot, the following question was asked to identify the plot owners: “Who owns this plot?” The question allowed up to 2 household members to be specified as owners.

24 81 percent of the plots in our sample are reported to be owned. Among the owned plots, 15 percent have joint ownership, of which the predominant form is male-female. The remaining 38 percent and 47 percent of the owned plots are under sole male ownership and sole female ownership, respectively.

25 The IHS3 identified 18,917 plots that were reported to have been owned and/or cultivated during the reference rainy season (2008/09 or 2009/10). 618 plots are not considered for analysis since they lacked either GPS-based plot coordinates or GPS-based plot area. 1,314 plots are dropped since they are either fallow or missing production information. 199 plots are not included in the sample since unit values could not be computed reliably for at least one of the crops reported to be cultivated on the plot. 11 plots do not have a manager identified and 67 plots have at 9