Measurement of intra-household resource control: Exploring the validity of experimental measures

Kate Ambler, Kelly Jones and Maria Recalde

No 1984, IFPRI discussion papers from International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

Abstract: We study the validity of experimental methods designed to measure preferences for intra-household resource control among spouses in Ghana and Uganda. We implement two incentivized tasks; (1) a game that measures willingness to pay to control resources, and (2) private and joint dictator games that measure preferences for resource allocation and the extent to which those preferences are reflected in joint decisions. Behavior in the two tasks is correlated, suggesting that they describe similar underlying latent variables. In Uganda the experimental measures are robustly correlated with a range of household survey measures of resource control and women’s empowerment and suggest that simple private dictator games may be as informative as more sophisticated tasks. In Ghana, the experimental measures are not predictive of survey indicators, suggesting that context may be an important element of whether experimental measures are informative.

Keywords: resource management; gender; women's empowerment; field experimentation; households; empowerment; decision making; bargaining power; women; Ghana; Uganda; Eastern Africa; Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Western Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-gth
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fpr:ifprid:1984

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