Productivity and health: Physical activity as a measure of effort

Akogun, Oladele, Dillon, Andrew, Friedman, Jed, Prasann, Ashesh and Serneels, Pieter (2021) Productivity and health: Physical activity as a measure of effort. World Bank Economic Review, 35 (3). 652–680. ISSN 0258-6770

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Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between physical activity and individual productivity among agricultural workers paid on a piece-rate basis. In the context studied, physical activity has a clear correspondence with worker effort. Agricultural workers’ physical activity is directly observed from accelerometer data and is robustly associated with their daily productivity. In addition the impact of a health intervention, which provides malaria testing and treatment, on physical activity and productivity, indicates that the increased daily productivity of workers who are offered this program is explained by worker effort reallocation from low-intensity to high-intensity work within a fixed time period. This demonstrates, in settings when individual productivity is observed, that physical activity measures can help disentangle productivity effects due to effort. When productivity is unobserved, physical activity measures may proxy for individual productivity in physically demanding tasks. The challenges and limitations of physical activity measurement using accelerometers is discussed including their potential use for alternative contexts and the importance of field and data analysis protocols.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	accelerometers,field experiment,labor productivity,malaria,physical activity,development,economics and econometrics,accounting,finance,sdg 3 - good health and well-being ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/3300/3303
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Global Development (formerly School of International Development)
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Impact Evaluation Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Centres > Centre for Behavioural and Experimental Social Sciences University of East Anglia Schools > Faculty of Science > Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research Faculty of Science > Research Centres > Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research
Related URLs:	http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?... https://academic.oup.com/wber/advance-ar...
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	12 Aug 2020 23:53
Last Modified:	25 Nov 2023 03:09
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/76403
DOI:	10.1093/wber/lhaa011

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