The Effect of Gender on Productivity Status in U.S. Agriculture

The role of gender in agriculture has gained considerable attention among policymakers and researchers. According to the 2013 Agricultural Resource Management Survey (ARMS) women served as the principal operator on almost 11 percent of U.S. farms and as a second or third operator on more than 40 percent of farms. Given the importance of women operators in productive agriculture the objective of this report will be to assess the impact of gender on net farm income, total farm output, farming efficiency, production costs, and total household income in the United States. We apply the average treatment approach (ATE) to analyze the impact of operator gender on the income and performance of U.S. farms