Abstract
We empirically study the determinants of intra-household decision power with respect to economic and financial choices using a suitable direct measure provided in the 1989-2010 Bank of Italy Survey of Household Income and Wealth. Focusing on a sample of couples, we evaluate the effect of each spouse's characteristics, household characteristics, and background variables. We find that the probability that the wife is in charge is affected by household characteristics such as family size and total income and wealth, but more importantly that it increases with the difference between hers and her husband's characteristics in terms of age, education, and income. The main conclusion is that decision-making power over family economics is not only determined by strictly economic differences, as suggested by previous studies, but also by differences in human capital and experience. Finally, exploiting the time dimension of our dataset, we show that this pattern is increasing over time.
Highlights
The goal of this paper is to investigate the determinants of intra-household decisionmaking power with respect to economic and financial choices
We empirically study the determinants of intra-household decision power with respect to economic and financial choices using a direct measure provided in the 1989-2010 Bank of Italy Survey of Household Income and Wealth
We find that the probability that the wife is in charge is affected by household characteristics such as family size and total income and wealth, but more importantly that it increases with the difference between hers and her husband's characteristics in terms of age, education, and income
Summary
The goal of this paper is to investigate the determinants of intra-household decisionmaking power with respect to economic and financial choices. Using a direct measure of actual decision-making power, we study its main determinants, taking into account individual characteristics of each spouse, household characteristics, and aggregate background factors. To identify the drivers of bargaining power has crucial implications for understanding how resources are distributed within the family, how household decisions are made in a variety of economic and non-economic realms, and how gender-based development initiatives should be designed. Direct measures of bargaining power are very rare. Our measure is provided by a repeated cross-sectional survey conducted by the Bank of Italy - the Survey of Household Income and Wealth (SHIW) - that reports who, within the household, is declared as the head, i.e., the person who is responsible for the financial and economic choices. Since the dataset includes eleven waves, covering a 22 years period from 1989 to 2010, it represents a unique tool for the analysis of decision power, its evolution, and its determinants
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