Tests of Income Pooling in Household Decisions

Valérie Lechene (), Orazio Attanasio, University College London and Institute for Fiscal Studies and NBER

No 106, Economics Series Working Papers from University of Oxford, Department of Economics

Abstract: Using the Progresa data from Mexico, we investigate intra-household decision making using a variety of outcomes. We exploit both the experimental nature and the (short) panel dimension of the data to measure the impact of exogenous changes in the intra-household distribution of resources on household decisions. We test for global pooling of resources within households, which would correspond to the unitary model of household decision making. We also exploit a set of questions about power and the decision making process in the household to investigate aspects of strategic interactions between household members. Our findings confirm previous rejections of income pooling. We also cannot reject that the wife`s relative income share is a significant determinant of the wife`s decision making power in the household, with a higher share of income associated with more decision making power.

Keywords: social welfare program; intra-household allocation; unitary model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002-06-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (195)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:f6daf1fe-df56-46f5-8d2d-a0f62b29a859 (text/html)

Related works:
Journal Article: Tests of Income Pooling in Household Decisions (2002)
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:oxf:wpaper:106

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economics Series Working Papers from University of Oxford, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Anne Pouliquen ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).