Taboos, agriculture and poverty

We study the impact of work taboos (fady days) on agriculture and poverty. Using cross-sectional data from a national household survey for Madagascar, we find that 18% of agricultural households have two or more fady days per week and that an extra fady day is associated with 6 percent lower per capita consumption and 5 percent lower rice productivity. To address the possible endogeneity of fady days, we present instrumental variable estimates and heterogeneous effect regressions using village fixed effects. We find that smaller households and those with less education employ less labor in villages with more fady days. Taboos, agriculture and poverty ‘Wednesday is an evil day. If one starts working in the rice fields on a Wednesday, there will be no harvest. On the other hand, Wednesday is a good day for burials... Thursday is dangerous. It might cause death in the village and it is fady to have burials on this day... Saturday is children’s day. It is an unfortunate day for big and important work... The morning is good on Sunday but the afternoon is evil and dangerous. It is therefore fady to work on Sunday, especially in the afternoon.’ (Ruud, 1960, pp. 32-35)