Does Female Empowerment Promote Economic Development?

Matthias Doepke and Michele Tertilt

No 19888, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Empirical evidence suggests that money in the hands of mothers (as opposed to fathers) increases expenditures on children. Does this imply that targeting transfers to women promotes economic development? Not necessarily. We consider a noncooperative model of the household where a gender wage gap leads to endogenous household specialization. As a result, women indeed spend more on children and invest more in human capital. Yet, depending on the nature of the production function, targeting transfers to womenmay be beneficial or harmful to growth. Transfers to women are more likely to be beneficial when human capital, rather than physical capital or land, is the most important factor of production. We provide empirical evidence supportive of our mechanism: In Mexican PROGRESA data, transfers to women lead to an increase in spending on children, but a decline in the savings rate.

JEL-codes: D13 J16 O10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-gro and nep-sog
Note: DEV EFG
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (70)

Published as Matthias Doepke & Michèle Tertilt, 2019. "Does female empowerment promote economic development?," Journal of Economic Growth, vol 24(4), pages 309-343.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w19888.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Does female empowerment promote economic development? (2019)
Working Paper: Does Female Empowerment Promote Economic Development? (2019)
Working Paper: Does Female Empowerment Promote Economic Development (2014)
Working Paper: Does Female Empowerment Promote Economic Development? (2014)
Working Paper: Does female empowerment promote economic development? (2014)
Working Paper: Does female empowerment promote economic development? (2014)
Working Paper: Does Female Empowerment Promote Economic Development? (2011)
Working Paper: Does Female Empowerment Promote Economic Development? (2011)
Working Paper: Does Female Empowerment Promote Economic Development? (2010)
Working Paper: Does Female Empowerment Promote Economic Development? (2010)
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:nbr:nberwo:19888

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w19888

Access Statistics for this paper

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