Women's Empowerment and Husband's Migration: Evidence from Indonesia

Olivier Bargain (), Jordan Loper () and Roberta Ziparo
Additional contact information
Olivier Bargain: BSE - Bordeaux sciences économiques - UB - Université de Bordeaux - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, IUF - Institut universitaire de France - M.E.N.E.S.R. - Ministère de l'Education nationale, de l’Enseignement supérieur et de la Recherche
Jordan Loper: CERDI - Centre d'Études et de Recherches sur le Développement International - IRD - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - UCA - Université Clermont Auvergne

CERDI Working papers from HAL

Abstract: Migration is an important risk-coping mechanism for poor households in developing countries. However, migration decisions may be sub-optimal in the presence of limited commitment between spouses. In this paper, we examine the link between the distribution of power in marriage and the decision to split-migrate (one spouse migrates alone) in Indonesia. We exploit a national policy experiment that exogenously increased women's bargaining power among ethnic groups of matrilocal tradition - the couple lives with the bride's relatives - relative to patrilocal groups. The propensity of matrilocal husbands to split-migrate, relative to patrilocal husbands, increases by 2-3.4 percentage points, i.e. a rise of 41-76%, following the reform. We suggest that empowered women may have gained control ex ante over outcomes that are costlier to monitor for husbands once they migrate. Hence, empowerment restores some efficiency in migration decisions by reducing the anticipated information asymmetry and the moral hazard associated with migration. Consistently, we show that households with empowered women are more able to cushion shocks due to natural disasters and, among all households experiencing split-migration, matrilocal women are better off than their patrilocal counterparts. We provide a theoretical framework that rationalizes the intra-household mechanisms behind these intuitions.

Keywords: Migration; Female empowerment; Intra-household decision-making; Ethnic norms; Gender; Natural experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-01-22
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-mig and nep-sea
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://cnrs.hal.science/hal-04409953v1
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cnrs.hal.science/hal-04409953v1/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Women's Empowerment and Husband's Migration: Evidence from Indonesia (2024)
Working Paper: Women's Empowerment and Husband's Migration: Evidence from Indonesia (2024)
Working Paper: Women's Empowerment and Husband's Migration: Evidence from Indonesia (2024)
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:hal:cdiwps:hal-04409953

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CERDI Working papers from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Contact - CERDI - Université Clermont Auvergne ().