Bargaining to work: the effect of female autonomy on female labour supply

Chloé Van Biljon (), Dieter von Fintel and Atika Pasha ()
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Chloé Van Biljon: Department of Economics and ReSEP, Stellenbosch University
Atika Pasha: Department of Economics, University of Mannheim

No 04/2018, Working Papers from Stellenbosch University, Department of Economics

Abstract: Female labour supply is an important outcome for measuring gender equality and is therefore regarded as one of the key indicators for women's empowerment. The empowerment of women through greater labour force participation is well documented in the literature. We argue, however, that the relationship between female labour force participation and empowerment is endogenous. We instead turn our attention to understanding whether greater female household autonomy causes participation in the labour market in the first place. Using the roll out of banking cards associated with the South African government cash transfers as an exogenous shock, we show that financial inclusion improves women's decision making power in the household. In response to this redistribution of bargaining power in the household, we provide evidence of increased female labour force participation. Our results show that becoming a primary decision maker leads to a 92 percentage point increase in the probability that women participate in the labour market.

Keywords: Female labour force participation; SASSA cards; female autonomy; non-cooperative household bargaining model; South Africa; NIDS (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C36 C78 D13 J16 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-gen, nep-hme and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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