Abstract

While climate-smart practices are increasingly promoted for their resilience and productivity benefits, little is known about how they affect intra-household labour allocation and labour productivity. This study examines the labor market implications of climate change adaptation strategies in West African agriculture, with a particular focus on the roles of women and children. Using a rich panel dataset from Ghana, Mali, and Nigeria, merged with high-resolution earth observation data on rainfall and temperature shocks, we assess whether adaptation technologies such as improoved seeds, intercropping, organic fertilizers, and their various combinations, generate additional labour demand, shift labour burdens within households, and improve the efficiency of agricultural work. The empirical strategy combines a two-way fixed effects model with a two-stage residual inclusion approach to address unobserved heterogeneity and potential endogeneity.

Our results show that climate adaptation increases household labour use by 20 to 40 man-days per season, depending on the specific adaptation strategy. Women and children bear a disproportionate share of the additional labour, especially under labour-intensive practices like organic fertilizer application and intercropping. For instance, female labour increases by up to 16 man-days under certain practices, while child labour rises by 6 man-days. This reallocation of work raises concerns about time poverty for women and the potential rise in child labour, which may have adverse effects on educational attainment and child welfare.

Despite these challenges, we also find strong evidence of productivity gains. Labour productivity increases by 18 to 45 percent across different adaptation strategies, with the largest gains observed under bundled adoption of improved seeds, intercropping, and organic fertilizers. These combinations yield especially high productivity improvements for women, whose efficiency in converting labour into output increases by up to 83 percent. However, we find no statistically significant gains in child labour productivity, suggesting that while children contribute more labour under adaptation, their work may not be efficient.

Adaptation also stimulates rural labour markets beyond the household. Our analysis reveals that households adopting climate-smart practices are more likely to hire external labour, with probabilities increasing by 6 to 33 percentage points depending on the practice. This indicates that adaptation may have positive spillover effects for local employment, particularly in contexts of underemployment and informal rural labour markets. However, the increased demand for labour also underscores the importance of addressing labour supply constraints and ensuring that women and children are not overburdened in the absence of accessible and affordable hired labour.

The findings from this study carry important policy implications. Climate adaptation is not only a tool for resilience and productivity, but also a vector of labour reallocation, job creation, and social transformation. However, the gendered patterns in labour responses highlight the need for gender-responsive and child-sensitive adaptation planning. Governments and development actors must consider complementary investments in labour-saving technologies, childcare infrastructure, and inclusive extension services to ensure that the benefits of adaptation are equitably shared. In parallel, improved access to rural credit and output markets could ease household constraints and reduce over-reliance on vulnerable labour sources. Overall, our study contributes new evidence on how climate adaptation affects the structure and productivity of rural labour, offering insights into its potential to support inclusive economic transformation in Africa.