Working Paper
Impact of soil conservation adoption on intrahousehold allocations in Zambia

In this paper, we examine the impact of soil conservation adoption on gender-specific
resource allocations within households in Zambia. The extension of funding of conservation
farming (CF) training sessions in 2007 in specific districts in Zambia provides variation in CF takeup.
We use this variation to implement a difference-in-differences strategy on a number of datasets.

We show that expansion of funding for CF training sessions increased take-up of CF, increased
female labour hours, and shifted household expenditures towards goods associated more strongly
with female preferences than male preferences. These results stress the importance of
understanding the impact of development programmes, specifically promotion of agricultural
technologies, on household gender dynamics.