Gender and Agency within the Household: Experimental Evidence from Pakistan

Marcel Fafchamps, Farah Said () and Giovanna d Adda
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Uzma Afzal and Giovanna d'Adda

No 11464, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: Theoretical and empirical work on intra-household decision making capture empowerment through bargaining weights given to individual preferences, and infer such weights from household consumption allocations. In this paper we test two key hypotheses underlying this work: first, that spousal influence is the same for all private consumption goods; and second, that women have pent up demand for pure agency. We use data from a survey and a novel laboratory experiment implemented with adult couples in Pakistan. We find that women's influence on household decisions is decreasing in the importance of the decision. We find no evidence that women have pent up demand for agency. Instead, women are less willing to pay for agency when facing an unknown man. We interpret this evidence as suggesting that women in our study population have internalized gender norms, and that these norms regulate interactions between genders most strongly outside of the household. We also find little evidence, within our experimental setting, that willingness to pay for agency is affected by the instrumental value of agency.

Keywords: Empowerment; Agency; Sharing rule; Consumption; Intrahousehold efficiency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D13 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem and nep-exp
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Working Paper: Gender and Agency within the Household: Experimental Evidence from Pakistan (2016)
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