Abstract

Using data from Nepal, we analyze patterns of concordance between spouses on survey questions regarding asset ownership and decision making separately for households in which a respondent couple lives with the husbandñ€ℱs parents and those in which they do not. We consider concordance regarding both the roles of women respondents and the roles of people other than the respondent couple. We find that discordance regarding womenñ€ℱs roles is both substantial and systematic; women are much more likely than men to report womenñ€ℱs participation in asset ownership and decision making, and this qualitative pattern is similar across household types. Regarding the role of others, the modal response in joint households is concordance that others own assets and make decisions. However, women are more likely than men to acknowledge this role of others. Next, we find that spousal concordance that women have a role, and wives reporting they have a role while their husbands say that they do not, are both correlated with some improved measures of well-being. In households with in-laws present, concordance that others are involved is correlated with worse outcomes for women. These results highlight that spousal concordance is not necessarily indicative of women's well-being, especially in joint households.

Highlights

  • Husbands and wives often provide different responses when asked the same questions in a household survey

  • We find that wives are more likely than husbands to acknowledge the role of others, again suggesting that there are information asymmetries between the husband and wife, likely regarding the role of the mother-in-law in asset ownership and decision making

  • About one-fourth of women indicate that they do not decide, whether alone or jointly, how to use their pewa, the inherited assets they receive before marriage (Ministry of Health, Nepal et al, 2017; Pradhan et al, 2019)

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Summary

Introduction

Husbands and wives often provide different responses when asked the same questions in a household survey The extent of their concordance in responses may provide important information about intrahousehold dynamics, beyond what we can learn from their individual responses. ⇑ Corresponding author at: Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, 2116 Social Sciences and Humanities, University of California, Davis, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616, USA exclusively on the couple, ignoring the broader structure of the households in which couples live. This obscures the potential significance of other adults who may play a role in household decision making. Over a third of the population lives in extended family households, with rates of 45% in the AsiaPacific region (Pew Research Center, 2019)

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