Female Bargaining Power Research Articles

Preference for sons: still a trend? Evidence from individual-level data from Finland, 1960–2015

Preference for sons has been shown in various ways, but is it still up to date? I investigate how sex preference has evolved during the past 50 years using population-wide data from Finland. I find that having a first-born girl increases fertility and decreases the probability of being together with the child’s father in the 1960s to 1980s but not after the 1990s. Families with a first-born girl had 0.03 more children in the years 1960–1980. The effect decreases to an imprecise zero in the 1990s and to 0.007 fewer children in the 2000s. This shift occurs at the same time as the female and male employment rates approach each other. As the costs of raising a girl are not greater than those of raising a boy in Finland, the results suggest that the shift might be due to increased female bargaining power. Past literature has shown that females prefer girls over boys or are more neutral than males, who prefer having sons over daughters more often.

Female Education and Brideprice: Evidence from Primary Education Reform in Uganda

Abstract Universal primary education (UPE) policies have been shown to improve educational attainment and delay marriage and childbearing, particularly among rural girls. This disproportionate improvement in female relative to male education can change the bargaining structure between the wife and the husband. Furthermore, with the expectation of this change, decisions about marriage-market entry, matching, and marital arrangements, such as brideprice, can change. In particular, greater female bargaining power can increase the share of marriages without a brideprice in settings where husbands may demand a refund upon divorce. Using first-hand data on marital transfers and exploiting Uganda’s UPE, which abolished primary school fees in 1997, this study shows that longer UPE exposure is associated positively with female education and negatively with brideprice practice. The results imply that UPE policies can affect women’s marital lives by empowering them in household decisions. The study also discusses the consistency of the results with other potential mechanisms, such as selective marriage-market entry, marital squeeze, and assortative matching.

Female Labour Force Participation and the Reduction in Son Preference in China

ABSTRACT The preference for sons transcends many cultures, making it an issue with local and global dimensions. This article explores if and how married women’s preferences in relation to their children are influenced by a shift in their economic status. Our results show that female employment had a significant effect on son preference. Specifically, women’s participation in the labour market reduces son preference by 15.7 per cent, and a 10 per cent increase in wages leads to a further 0.05 per cent reduction in the preference for having sons rather than daughters. The results also support the view that economic factors are sufficient to change deeply entrenched norms regarding gender preferences. We attribute the positive effect of labour participation on female bargaining power to shifts in the allocation of intrahousehold resources. The article conducts a cross-regional test to illustrate that the developmental gap between rural and urban communities partly explains China’s increasing sex imbalance. It thereby shows why the phenomenon of ‘missing women’ has played out so differently worldwide.

Share the love: Parental bias, women empowerment and intergenerational mobility

This study provides empirical evidence and develops a model that captures the complex intra-household bargaining interactions and gender-based intergenerational occupational mobility. Using panel data from Nigeria, our estimates show that greater intra-household female bargaining power leads to greater intergenerational occupational mobility for sons more than daughters. Similarly, the median age at first marriage has a positive impact on occupational mobility for both daughters and sons. However, benefit is larger for sons. In the model, parental gender bias is modeled as non-pecuniary (psychic) cost – a representation of parents’ pessimistic attitude towards their children’s adulthood outcomes – which negatively affects the marginal benefit of investing in children’s human capital. The decision of parents is critical in determining children’s mobility and becomes the basis of gender-based differences in human capital investment and intergenerational persistence.

Intra-Household Bargaining Power and its Impact on the Female Labor Force Supply in Pakistan: Women Empowerment Perspective

Female labour participation is critical to the country's socioeconomic growth. This quantitative study aims to assess female decision-making processes in Pakistan, considering endogenous intra-household empowerment and female labour-force participation. The study's theoretical foundation is derived from the conventional Collective Bargaining Model of the family. According to the collective model, bargaining among household members serves as the foundation for household decisions, and these decisions shift the balance of power within the family. Cross-sectional data from the Pakistan Social and Living Standard Measurement Survey (PSLM) for 2013-14 were utilized in the study. We developed an Index of Female Bargaining Power (BPF) to measure the BPF and its relationship with female labour supply (FLS). In addition, the household and individual characteristics of females are considered in this study. To capture the endogeneity of women empowerment inside the home, the Instrumental Variable (IV) method is used. The study's findings indicated a strong and substantial endogenous relationship between the BPF and FLS.

Mama loves you: The gender wage gap and expenditure on children's education in China

We investigate the effect of the provincial female-to-male wage gap on household educational expenditure for children in China. We find that an increase in the female-to-male wage ratio is positively associated with individual households’ educational investment in individual children, especially the out-of-school expenditures. The positive association is stronger for male children than for female children. Educational investment is more sensitive to a decrease in the gender wage gap among those with a higher educational level or a reduction in the gender wage gap within the informal sectors. However, educational investment is not sensitive to the gender differentials in the economic returns to education in the labour market. There is considerable heterogeneity in the effects of the gender wage gap across subsamples. Educational investments in children in senior high school, from medium- and low-income families, from urban areas and from families with only male children are more susceptible to a decrease in the gender wage gap. We also find that family income, economic growth and female bargaining power partially mediate the relationship between the gender wage gap and children's education expenditure.

Conditional cash transfers, female bargaining power and parental labour supply

AbstractRecent empirical evidence shows that conditional cash transfer (CCT) programmes do not have an aggregate effect on the adult labour supply. However, little attention has been paid to the role of other intrahousehold dynamics. This paper examines how the parental labour supply response to CCT programmes varies with the bargaining power structure of households. We analyse a randomized experimental CCT design from rural areas of Honduras (PRAF) and found that women with more bargaining power in the household are four percentage points less likely to be employed than other women.

An Ethnographic Assessment of Female Intra-Household Bargaining Power: A Case Study of Domestic Workers from India during a Pandemic

A greater participation of women in labour-force assists in increasing the overall household income while reducing overall levels of (income) poverty and increasing the household consumption of goods and services. A higher female-male labor participation rate has also shown to allow a greater agency for a woman and her intra-household bargaining power (and decision-making) at a household level. India’s context in this regard-with a highly fragmented labor market-presents a deeply worrying picture.This paper makes an attempt to study the material (income, accumulation of physical assets etc.) and the sociological (embedded in the social structure of households) aspects affecting the social position of women in their own household. Our analysis, through an ethnographic assessment of female intra-household bargaining power, makes an attempt to study the case of female domestic workers-seen to be part of India’s large informal and unsecured workforce- across the cities of Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh), Chandigarh (Punjab) and Jhansi (Uttar Pradesh). We try to understand the extent to which women (working as domestic workers) have a say in matters of consumption preference, fertility preference, their child’s education preference and their child’s marriage preference at an intra-household level.

The Power to Protect: Household Bargaining and Female Condom Use

Women may face systematically greater benefits than men from adopting certain technologies. Yet women often hold lower bargaining power, meaning that men's preferences may constrain household adoption when decisions are joint. When low female bargaining power constrains adoption of the first-best technology, introducing a version of the technology that is second-best in terms of cost or effectiveness, but more acceptable to men, may increase adoption and welfare. This paper contributes the first explicit model and test of the trade-offs when introducing a second-best technology in such a setting. We conduct a field experiment introducing female condoms (which are less effective and more expensive than male condoms, but often preferred by men) in an area with high HIV prevalence. We observe an increase in the likelihood that women have sex and find strongest adoption of female condoms among women with lower bargaining power, who were previously having unprotected sex.

Is there still son preference in the United States?

In this paper, we use 2008–2013 American Community Survey data to update and further probe evidence on son preference in the USA. In light of the substantial increase in immigration, we examine this question separately for natives and immigrants. Dahl and Moretti (Review of Economic Studies 75, 1085-1120, 2008) found earlier evidence consistent with son preference in that having a female first child raised fertility and increased the probability that the family was living without a father. We find that for our more recent period, having a female first child still raises the likelihood of living without a father, but is instead associated with lower fertility, particularly for natives. Thus, by the 2008–2013 period, any apparent son preference in fertility decisions appears to have been outweighed by factors such as cost concerns in raising girls or increased female bargaining power. In contrast, some evidence for son preference in fertility persists among immigrants. Immigrant families that have a female first child have significantly higher fertility and are more likely to be living without a father (though not significantly so). Further, gender inequity in source countries is associated with son preference in fertility among immigrants. For both first- and second-generation immigrants, the impact of a female first-born child on fertility is more pronounced for immigrants from source countries with less gender equity. Finally, we find no evidence of sex selection for the general population of natives and immigrants, suggesting that it does not provide an alternative mechanism to account for the disappearance of a positive fertility effect for natives.

Demand Effects of Gender Inequality in Wages and Female Bargaining Power

This paper examines the influence of gender inequality in the determination of effective demand in the US, the UK, Canada and Australia. Focusing on consumption as a pathway to growth, the simple Keynesian construction of consumption behaviour is extended by introducing differences in the marginal propensity to consume out of male and female income. The methodology involves time-series estimation of consumption specifications. Building on micro-level evidence, we examine the long-run effects and short-run dynamics of gender wage inequality and female bargaining power on aggregate consumption. Econometric evidence is presented that upward convergence of women’s wages to men’s has a substantial positive impact on aggregate consumption when household spending is assumed to be wage-constrained. This conclusion is especially true for the UK, the US and Australia; we do not find conclusive evidence to show that rising gender wage inequality had a dampening effect on the time path of consumption in Canada between 1975 and 2014. Overall, the argument is made that, all things equal, improvements in the labour market conditions of women has an overall positive effect on aggregate household consumption expenditure and the short to medium term composition of aggregate consumption.

Is There Still Son Preference in the United States?

In this paper, we use 2008-2013 American Community Survey data to update and further probe evidence on son preference in the United States. In light of the substantial increase in immigration, we examine this question separately for natives and immigrants. Dahl and Moretti (2008) found earlier evidence consistent with son preference in that having a female first child raised fertility and increased the probability that the family was living without a father. We find that for our more recent period, having a female first child still raises the likelihood of living without a father, but is instead associated with lower fertility, particularly for natives. Thus, by the 2008-2013 period, any apparent son preference in fertility decisions appears to have been outweighed by factors such as cost concerns in raising girls or increased female bargaining power. In contrast, some evidence for son preference in fertility persists among immigrants. Immigrant families that have a female first child have significantly higher fertility and are more likely to be living without a father (though not significantly so). Further, gender inequity in source countries is associated with son preference in fertility among immigrants. For both first and second generation immigrants, the impact of a female first-born on fertility is more pronounced for immigrants from source countries with less gender equity. Finally, we find no evidence of sex selection for the general population of natives and immigrants, suggesting that it does not provide an alternative mechanism to account for the disappearance of a positive fertility effect for natives.

DESIRE AND DEVELOPMENT

This paper explores the impact of gender differences in the desire for sex and the distribution of power in the household on the onset of the demographic transition and the take-off to growth. Depending on the price and efficacy of modern contraceptives, the gender wage gap, and female bargaining power, the economy assumes one of two possible equilibria. At the traditional equilibrium, contraceptives are not used, fertility is high and education and growth are low. At the modern equilibrium, contraceptives are used, fertility is low and further declining with increasing income, and education and growth are high. The theory motivates a “wanted fertility reversal”: At the traditional equilibrium, men prefer more children than women, whereas at the modern equilibrium, men prefer fewer children than women. Female empowerment causes households to provide more education for their children and leads to an earlier uptake of modern contraceptives and an earlier onset of the demographic transition and the take-off to modern growth.

PROTOCOL: The effects of road infrastructure, and transport and logistics services interventions on women's participation in informal and formal labour markets in low- and middle-income countries: a systematic review.

PROTOCOL: The effects of road infrastructure, and transport and logistics services interventions on women's participation in informal and formal labour markets in low- and middle-income countries: a systematic review.

“The family farms together, the decisions, however are made by the man” —Matrilineal land tenure systems, welfare and decision making in rural Malawi

Improved female control over land is often put forth as a means of raising the productivity of smallholder agriculture, enhancing female bargaining power and raising women’s incomes. The article uses some quantitative but primarily qualitative data on access to income and decision making, to analyse gender patterns related to welfare, incomes and control over resources in a context where women’s rights to land are particularly strong, that is in a matrilineal and uxorilocal setting. Women’s land rights are contextualized in relation to labour intensive, low productive smallholder systems and the paper assesses to what extent female control over land affects welfare outcomes, decision making and intra-household control over incomes and labour. While we find that female control over land does affect intra household relations it is clear that land reform is not enough to ensure gender equality. For any land use policy reform to have a profound affect it would have to also take into account control over other productive resources, e.g. labour, as well as the wider institutional and political context.

Women's economic opportunities and the intra-household production of child human capital

This paper exploits variation in the relative demand for male and female labour during the Great Recession to estimate the effect of women's relative economic opportunities on the resources parents allocate to children. Estimates from the American Time Use Survey suggest that a 5 percentage point increase in the female-to-male wage ratio raises parents' time with children by one hour per week. Child test scores on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary test are estimated to increase by 8 per cent of a standard deviation in response to such ath the wage ratio and thn increase. Further analysis of our results suggests that an associated increase in female bargaining power is necessary to explain our empirical findings.

Female poverty and intrahousehold inequality in transition economies

Transition to a market economy is accompanied by a period of greater economic uncertainty. Women are likely to suffer substantial disadvantages from this uncertainty compared to men as they are, for example, more likely to lose their job. This not only implies a monetary loss for the entire family, but also degrades female bargaining power within the household, possibly further aggravating their well-being. When intra-household inequality—an unequal distribution of resources among family members—exists, female poverty might be significantly larger than what can be deduced using standard household based poverty measures.

Is There Still Son Preference in the United States?

In this paper, we use 2008-2013 American Community Survey data to update and further probe evidence on son preference in the United States. In light of the substantial increase in immigration, we examine this question separately for natives and immigrants. Dahl and Moretti (2008) found earlier evidence consistent with son preference in that having a female first child raised fertility and increased the probability that the family was living without a father. We find that for our more recent period, having a female first child still raises the likelihood of living without a father, but is instead associated with lower fertility, particularly for natives. Thus, by the 2008-2013 period, any apparent son preference in fertility decisions appears to have been outweighed by factors such as cost concerns in raising girls or increased female bargaining power. In contrast, some evidence for son preference in fertility persists among immigrants. Immigrant families that have a female first child have significantly higher fertility and are more likely to be living without a father (though not significantly so). Further, gender inequity in source countries is associated with son preference in fertility among immigrants. For both first and second generation immigrants, the impact of a female first-born on fertility is more pronounced for immigrants from source countries with less gender equity. Finally, we find no evidence of sex selection for the general population of natives and immigrants, suggesting that it does not provide an alternative mechanism to account for the disappearance of a positive fertility effect for natives.

Desire and Development

This paper explores the impact of gender differences in the desire for sex and the distribution of power in the household on the onset of the demographic transition and the take-off to growth. Depending on the price and efficacy of modern contraceptives, the gender wage gap, and female bargaining power, the economy assumes one of two possible equilibria. At the traditional equilibrium, contraceptives are not used, fertility is high and education and growth are low. At the modern equilibrium, contraceptives are used, fertility is low and further declining with increasing income, and education and growth are high. The theory motivates a “wanted fertility reversal”: At the traditional equilibrium, men prefer more children than women whereas at the modern equilibrium, men prefer fewer children than women. Female empowerment nudges households to provide more education for their children and leads to an earlier uptake of modern contraceptives and an earlier onset of the demographic transition and the take-off to modern growth.

Work Versus School? The Effect of Work on Educational Expenditures for Children in Mexico

This paper explores the impact of child labor on child welfare, with a specific focus on the relationship between working and education. I look at the empirical relationship between working and educational expenditure budget shares for children age 5-14 in Mexico. I accomplish this using a household fixed effects model and data from two waves of the Mexican Family Life Survey (MxFLS). The results indicate that working increases school expenditure shares for working children. In particular, on average, girls engaged in paid work have total annual education expenditure shares that are 48.6% higher than girls who do not work. This relationship varies significantly with characteristics of both the individual and the household, including the child's gender and type of work performed, as well as the household's income, location, and relative female bargaining power. The results indicate that working does not appear to translate into a decrease in welfare and the additional expenditure is directed towards goods that improve the quality of education.