Increasing Women's Empowerment: Implications for Family Welfare

Kate Ambler (), Kelly Jones and O’Sullivan, Michael
Additional contact information
Kate Ambler: IFPRI, International Food Policy Research Institute
O’Sullivan, Michael: World Bank

No 14861, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Increasing women's empowerment is a key objective of many development programs, both as a principal goal and as a path to economic development. We propose and test a novel economic intervention that relies on intra-household transfers of productive assets to increase women’s empowerment among sugar farmers in Uganda. We document that this intervention increases women's access to resources and agency by a substantial amount. In contrast, a behavior change intervention (training) increases empowerment through agency and achievements, with no impact on access to resources. We use these interventions to test the widely held (but weakly supported) assumption that empowering women generates improvements in child welfare. We find that, contrary to studies examining extra-household transfers, these interventions do not shift food security, health, or educational outcomes. They do, however, improve life satisfaction both for women and their husbands.

Keywords: empowerment; intra-household allocation; family welfare; Uganda; Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D13 J12 J16 O12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 80 pages
Date: 2021-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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