plots in the context of strong inverse returns to area planted. Using an earlier round of this panel data set (UNHS 2005/2006) (Carletto, Savastano, and Zezza 2013) corroborate the presence of strong inverse returns to planted area in Uganda and, furthermore, compare GPS and self-reported plot area measurement to show that this result is not a product of measurement error in self-reported land size.

The other major contributor to the female endowment advantage is the higher number of family labor days applied to female-managed plots per acre. This is partially, but not entirely, offset by higher application of hired labor to male-managed plots, so that the net contribution of family and hired labor accounts for the remainder of the female endowment advantage (25%). But the data do not allow us to disaggregate the endowment of family labor by gender or age.

Another striking result is that the combined contribution of material inputs to the gap, 1.8 percentage points, is insubstantial as a result of the extremely low overall application of these inputs. The strong statistical significance of the contribution from application of improved seeds and pesticides, and weak significance of the contribution from manure, however, suggest that material input use may become an important contributor to the gap as these technologies proliferate.

Although female cultivators are disadvantaged by being less likely to cultivate cash crops, they are partially compensated by greater likelihood to cultivate roots, pulses and oilseeds, so that the net contribution of crop choice to the gap is only 2.4 percentage points. However, female farmers who do plant banana and roots receive a much higher return from doing so than male farmers who plant these crops, an effect which entirely offsets the male advantage in crop selection.

The drawback of this approach is that the detailed decomposition can be applied only to parcel-level characteristics while accounting for unobserved household, person, and community-season characteristics. To get a sense of the contribution of observable household and community covariates, we estimate the decomposition again with only region-season fixed effects.

Column 2 of table 4 shows the O-B decomposition accounting for region-season level unobserved characteristics only. The most striking result from the decomposition of household-level characteristics is the extremely large and statistically significant contribution from return to the child dependency ratio of 13 percentage points, accounting for 74% of the overall gap. This implies that child-care activities differentially constrain female farmers’ ability to supervise or perform labor activities on their plots.

Female productivity is also affected differentially by distance to nearest major road. This may reflect lower mobility due to household obligations, access to transport, or informal social institutions regarding female travel. The difference in return contributes 6 percentage points to the gap, but is only weakly significant.

Men benefited marginally from greater access to NAADS extension services (.4 percentage points) but received no greater return from this access. Return to the value of household livestock contributes 3.7 percentage points to the gap. The value of livestock is a proxy for male wealth since, outside female-headed households virtually all reported livestock is controlled by males. This is consistent with resource constraint in the context of credit-market failure.

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