Intrahousehold Resource Allocation in Cote d'Ivoire: Social Norms, Separate Accounts and Consumption Choices

Esther Duflo and Christopher Udry ()

No 10498, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We study resource allocation within households in C“te d'Ivoire. In C“te d'Ivoire, as in much of Africa, husbands and wives farm separate plots, and there is some specialization by gender in the crops that are grown. These different crops are differentially sensitive to particular kinds of rainfall shocks. We find that conditional on overall levels of expenditure, the composition of household expenditure is sensitive to the gender of the recipient of a rainfall shock. For example, rainfall shocks associated with high yields of women's crops shift expenditure towards food. Strong social norms constrain the use of profits from yam cultivation, which is carried out almost exclusively by men. In line with these norms, we find that rainfall-induced fluctuations in income from yams are transmitted to expenditures on education and food, not to expenditures on private goods (like alcohol and tobacco). We reject the hypothesis of complete insurance within households, even with respect to publicly observable weather shocks. Different sources of income are allocated to different uses depending upon both the identity of the income earner and upon the origin of the income.

JEL-codes: O12 D13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev
Date: 2004-05
Note: CH
View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w10498.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html.

Related works:
Working Paper: Intrahousehold Resource Allocation in Cote D'Ivoire: Social Norms, Separate Accounts and Consumption Choices (2004)
Working Paper: Intrahousehold Resource Allocation in Côte D'ivoire: Social Norms, Separate Accounts and Consumption Choices (2003)
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: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:10498

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w10498
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc
Address: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by ().