Gender Differences in Intra-Household Financial Decision-Making: An Application of Coarsened Exact Matching

Frederik Booysen and Sevias Guvuriro
Additional contact information
Frederik Booysen: School of Economics and Finance, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg 2000, South Africa
Sevias Guvuriro: Department of Economics and Finance, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein 9301, South Africa

JRFM, 2021, vol. 14, issue 10, 1-11

Abstract: Most studies that explore collective models of intra-household decision-making use economic outcomes such as human capital, earnings, assets, and relative income shares as proxies of the relative distribution of bargaining power. These studies, however, fail to incorporate important measures of control over and management of the economic resources within households. In the current study, a direct measure of financial decision-making power within the household is used to directly assess the distribution of bargaining power. Coarsened exact matching, an identification strategy not yet applied in studies of this nature, is applied to couple-level observational data from South Africa’s longitudinal National Income Dynamics Study. The influence of gender differences in intra-household decision-making on resource allocations to per capita household expenditure is assessed. In the case of greater financial decision-making power in couples being assigned to wives rather than husbands, per capita household expenditure on education increases significantly. The empowerment of women with financial decision-making power therefore holds the promise of realizing the benefits of investments in human capital.

Keywords: gender; intra-household decision-making; coarsened exact matching; household expenditure; resource allocation; South Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C E F2 F3 G (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1911-8074/14/10/469/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1911-8074/14/10/469/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jjrfmx:v:14:y:2021:i:10:p:469-:d:650854

Access Statistics for this article

JRFM is currently edited by Ms. Chelthy Cheng

More articles in JRFM from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().