Household bargaining and spending on children: Experimental evidence from Tanzania

Charlotte Ringdal and Ingrid Hoem Sjursen ()
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Ingrid Hoem Sjursen: Dept. of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, Postal: NHH , Department of Economics, Helleveien 30, N-5045 Bergen, Norway

No 19/2017, Discussion Paper Series in Economics from Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Economics

Abstract: It is frequently assumed that money in the hands of women leads to better out-comes for their children than money in the hands of men. However, empirical and theoretical evidence are mixed. We conduct a novel between-subject lab-in-the-field experiment to study whether increasing the wife's control over resources causes a couple to allocate more to their child. The paper provides two main insights. First, increasing the wife's bargaining power does not increase the share allocated to the child, but leads to more gender-equal allocations to children. Second, time preferences are important in explaining household decision-making; it is better for the child that the most patient spouse has more relative bargaining power. Our results highlight the importance of taking a broader set of preferences into account when studying household decision-making, and suggest that policy aimed to increase spending on children should target the spouse with preferences most aligned with such spending.

Keywords: Intra-household allocation; female bargaining Power; Tanzania (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C92 D13 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 53 pages
Date: 2017-10-19
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-dem and nep-exp
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Household Bargaining and Spending on Children: Experimental Evidence from Tanzania (2021)
Working Paper: Household bargaining and spending on children: Experimental evidence from Tanzania (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:nhheco:2017_019

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