Intra-household Decision-making Research Articles

Financial Literacy and Intra-Household Decision Making: Evidence from Rwanda

Despite considerable policy efforts, women continue to be underrepresented in positions of power and decision making. As an important aspect of women empowerment, we examine women’s participation in intrahousehold financial decision making and how this is affected by financial literacy. Using both OLS and IV regression analysis, we show that women with higher financial literacy are more involved in household financial decisions. In line with the literature, we further find that women are less financially literate than men. Results from decomposition analysis show that education and personality traits (openness, happiness, and depression) drive this financial literacy gender gap.

Bargaining Power or Specialization? Determinants of Household Decision Making in Chinese Rural Migrant Families

Family migration is a common integration process for rural migrants in contemporary China. However, discussions on intra-household decision making in dual-earner migrant families are limited. This study aims to address this gap. The data set from the Rural Urban Migration in China (RUMiC2008–2010) is employed to explore the determinants of household decision making. In addition, logit regression is performed to estimate the probability of wives acting as head of the household under different specifications, and the Blinder–Oaxaca–Fairlie decomposition is utilized to discuss gender differentials in decision-making responsibilities. Income and migration duration differentials between a wife and husband have important influences on the probability of being responsible for household decision making. The squared terms of wives’ and husbands’ income have inverted effects. The gender gap between household decision makers can be largely attributed to structural factors rather than observable characteristics, though bargaining power acts as the main contributor in explained parts. Bargaining theory can account for the probability of wives becoming the household decision maker, and the claim of the specialization approach is also confirmed. Gender inequality among household decision makers is largely attributed to structural factors, such as cultural/social norms, obstacles, or gender discrimination. The establishment of long-term effective mechanisms to improve employment quality for female migrants, the supply of basic public services, and protection of women’s legal rights in the household should be strengthened in the future to elevate the status of female migrants.

Intra-household decision-making, production diversity, and dietary quality: a panel data analysis of Ethiopian rural households

Considering that rural poor are mostly subsistence farmers, it seems plausible that production diversity could lead to better nutrition for these farmers. The association between production and dietary diversity is complex, and this complexity demands rigorous empirical analyses and more attention to gendered aspects of intra-household decision-making. We employ panel data analyses of 363 Ethiopian smallholders surveyed in 2014 and 2016 to test for this phenomenon, and to explore the association of women’s participation in decision-making with both production and consumption diversity. Results show that, diversification can be a strategy to improve the diets, but only of rural poor who have limited non-farm income, who are distant to the markets and mostly subsistence oriented. Moreover, female participation in decision-making associates with higher diversity both in terms of production and consumption, but it does not modify the magnitude of the association between production and dietary diversity. Our analyses contribute to the enriching literature on the linkage between production diversification and dietary diversity. We study this complex relationship in-depth and show that the gendered aspect of intra-household decision-making is an important covariate for both production diversity and dietary quality.

Effectiveness of a culturally appropriate intervention to prevent intimate partner violence and HIV transmission among men, women, and couples in rural Ethiopia: Findings from a cluster-randomized controlled trial.

BackgroundIntimate partner violence (IPV) is associated with increased HIV risk and other adverse health and psychosocial outcomes. We assessed the impact of Unite for a Better Life (UBL), a gender-transformative, participatory intervention delivered to men, women, and couples in Ethiopia in the context of the coffee ceremony, a traditional community-based discussion forum.Methods and findingsVillages (n = 64) in 4 Ethiopian districts were randomly allocated to control, men’s UBL, women’s UBL, or couples’ UBL, and approximately 106 households per village were randomly selected for inclusion in the trial. The intervention included 14 sessions delivered twice weekly by trained facilitators; control arm households were offered a short IPV educational session. Primary outcomes were women’s experience of past-year physical or sexual IPV 24 months postintervention. Secondary outcomes included male perpetration of past-year physical or sexual IPV, comprehensive HIV knowledge, and condom use at last intercourse. Additional prespecified outcomes included experience and perpetration of past-year physical and/or sexual IPV and emotional IPV, HIV/AIDs knowledge and behaviors, decision-making, and gender norms. An intention-to-treat (ITT) analysis was conducted, evaluating 6,770 households surveyed at baseline in 2014–2015 (1,680 households, 16 clusters in control; 1,692 households, 16 clusters in couples’ UBL; 1,707 households, 16 clusters in women’s UBL; 1,691 households, 16 clusters in men’s UBL). Follow-up data were available from 88% of baseline respondents and 87% of baseline spouses surveyed in 2017–2018. Results from both unadjusted and adjusted specifications are reported, the latter adjusting for age, education level, marriage length, polygamy, socioeconomic status, and months between intervention and endline. For primary outcomes, there was no effect of any UBL intervention compared to control on women’s past-year experience of physical (couples’ UBL arm adjusted odds ratio [AOR] = 1.00, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.77–1.30, p = 0.973; women’s UBL arm AOR = 1.11, 95% CI 0.87–1.42, p = 0.414; men’s UBL arm AOR = 1.02, 95% CI: 0.81–1.28, p = 0.865) or sexual IPV (couples’ UBL arm AOR = 0.86, 95% CI: 0.62–1.20, p = 0.378; women’s UBL arm AOR = 1.15, 95% CI: 0.89–1.50; p = 0.291; men’s UBL arm AOR = 0.80, 95% CI: 0.63–1.01, p = 0.062). For the secondary outcomes, only the men’s UBL intervention significantly reduced male perpetration of past-year sexual IPV (AOR: 0.73; 95% CI: 0.56–0.94, p = 0.014), and no intervention reduced perpetration of past-year physical IPV. Among women, the couples’ UBL intervention significantly improved comprehensive HIV knowledge, and both couples’ and women’s UBL significantly increased reported condom use at last intercourse. Among additional outcomes of interest, the men’s UBL intervention was associated with a significant reduction in women’s experience of past-year physical and/or sexual IPV (AOR = 0.81, 95% CI: 0.66–0.99, p = 0.036) and men’s perpetration of physical and/or sexual IPV (AOR = 0.78; 95% CI: 0.62–0.98, p = 0.037). UBL delivered to men and couples was associated with a significant reduction in HIV risk behaviors and more equitable intrahousehold decision-making and household task-sharing. The primary limitation is reliance on self-reported data.ConclusionsA gender-transformative intervention delivered to men was effective in reducing self-reported perpetration of sexual IPV but did not reduce IPV when delivered to couples or women. We found evidence of decreased sexual IPV with men’s UBL across men’s and women’s reports and of increased HIV knowledge and condom use at last intercourse among women. The men’s UBL intervention could help accelerate progress towards gender equality and combating HIV/AIDS.Trial registrationThe trial was prospectively registered at clinicaltrials.gov (NCT02311699) and in the American Economic Association registry (AEARCTR-0000211).

Women's Ownership and Access: Effects on Intra-Household Decisions

We examine the effect of women’s ownership of, and access to resources (economic autonomy) on their relative decision-making power in households using an Instrumental Variable/Fixed effects approach. Neighboring women’s exposure to different forms of media is utilized as a source of exogenous variation to identify this effect. While we find strong causal impacts of greater economic autonomy on their relative position in decision-making, there is evidence of a diminishing marginal effect of autonomy. Exploring the components of relative decision-making power and autonomy further, we suggest that sole ownership of financial assets rather than physical assets are the main drivers of economic autonomy for women, resulting in changes in their bargaining positions. These effects are highlighted for older women; unemployed women; women more educated than their husbands; and in rural areas. Our results are robust to a number of econometric concerns.

Whose voice matters? An experimental examination of gender bias in intra-household decision-making

We conduct an experiment to examine gender bias in intra-household decision-making in rural Bangladesh. The experiment mimics a real-life scenario, in which a risky choice with high stakes is offered to either spouse and he/she then has to decide whether to make the decision or transfer it to the other spouse. We then observe the decision-making process under alternative experimental conditions to determine intra-household gender bias. We find that women are more likely to allow their spouses to make decisions than men are. Our findings suggest that women's transfer decisions are driven by asymmetries in both power and perceived financial capabilities.

Impact of Remittances and Gender on Expenditure Pattern: An Insight into Intra-Household Resource allocation of Rural Sector Households in Sri Lanka

Using a nationally representative data set, this study examines the impact of migrant remittances on expenditure pattern and intra-household decision making process of rural households in Sri Lanka. The impact was estimated using fractional logit models within the Engel curve framework. Estimating the fractional logit models, we find evidence that there are strong differences in the impact on expenditure patterns of male and female household heads with the receipt of internal remittances whereas effect of international remittances on changing the expenditure pattern and the intra-household resource allocation is negligible. More specifically male household heads allocate less on education and more on ad hoc purchases, entertainment and transport expenditure, while female household heads allocate more on food expenditure with the receipt of internal remittances. Moreover, remitters’ contribution for the ad hoc purchases, entertainment and transport expenditure increases with their presence as a migrant to the household head. Overall, the study concludes that remittances are not directed towards the productive investments or human capital formation with the receipt of remittances in male headed or female headed households of rural sector of Sri Lanka.

Effect of Technological Innovation on Gender Roles: The Case of Fruit Fly IPM Adoption on Women’s Decision-Making in Mango Production and Marketing in Kenya

An increase in returns from agriculture as a result of new or improved technology is often perceived to escalate women's loss of control over agricultural production and ability to make marketing decision due to persistent gender disparities in access to production resources. The International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) and partners have developed integrated pest management (IPM) technology to suppress mango fruit flies on smallholder mango farm in sub-Saharan Africa. Despite the impressive direct economic impacts of the technology, no study has been conducted to determine whether it has any impact on intra-household gender roles in mango production and marketing decision-making. Using a sample of 470 mango-growing households from Machakos County, we employed a two-limit Tobit difference-in-differences model on the women’s decision-making index to examine the impact of IPM technology adoption on intra-household decision-making in mango production and marketing activities. The results showed a decrease of 21.2% in the women's decision-making index due to the adoption of IPM technology. The index can be enhanced through women's access to training by extension officers, increased formal education, and direct intervention for women to increase their investment in mango production.

Women’s participation in decision-making and its implications for human capital investment

AbstractWe evaluate the implications of women’s participation in domestic decision-making on diets and investments in human resources in Ethiopian rural households. We create a metric to capture intra-household decision-making, which we use to estimate a positive association between women’s participation in decision-making and household-level dietary diversity. Moreover, we find that an increase in women’s participation in intra-household decision-making is associated with higher financial investments in human resources.

Grappling with the challenges of measuring women's economic empowerment in intrahousehold settings

Abstract Defining and measuring women's economic empowerment (WEE) has been at the centre of the current debates among international development scholars and practitioners. The lack of clear consensus on both may limit widespread efforts to design and evaluate programs and policies aimed at improving women's well-being. Building on intra-household allocation models and on Sen (1989) and Kabeer (1999), this paper proposes a conceptual framework of intrahousehold decision-making which can accommodate many classes of WEE measures. It proposes a typology of WEE measures which combines proximity of concept to measurability. Findings from a review of the scholarly literature between 2005 and 2020 are then presented to demonstrate the diversity of published approaches that exist to measure WEE.

Impact of a complex gender-transformative intervention on maternal and child health outcomes in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo: protocol of a longitudinal parallel mixed-methods study

BackgroundIn the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLAs) programs targeting women are implemented. In the context of the ‘Mawe Tatu’ program more equitable intra-household decision-making is stipulated by accompanying women’s participation in VSLAs with efforts to engage men for more gender equality, expecting a positive effect of this combined intervention on the household economy, on child nutritional status, on the use of reproductive health services including family planning, and on reducing sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV).MethodsA longitudinal parallel mixed method study is conducted among women participating in VSLAs in randomly selected project areas and among a control group matched for socioeconomic characteristics. Descriptive statistics will be calculated and differences between intervention and control groups will be assessed by Chi2 tests for different degrees of freedom for categorical data or by t-tests for continuous data. Structural equation modelling (SEM) will be conducted to investigate the complex and multidimensional pathways that will affect household economic status, child nutritional status and use of reproductive health services. Analysis will be conducted with STATA V.15.Concomitantly, qualitative data collection will shed light on the intra-household processes related to gender power-relations that may be linked to women’s participation in economic activities and may lead to improvements of maternal and child health. Focus group discussions and in-depth interviews will be conducted. All narrative data will be coded (open coding) with the help of qualitative data analysis software (Atlas TI).DiscussionWomen’s empowerment has long been identified as being able to bring about progress in various areas, including health. It has been shown that men’s commitment to transforming gender norms is a sinequanone factor for greater equity and better health, especially in terms of reproductive health and child nutrition. This study is one of the first in this genre in DRC and results will serve as a guide for policies aimed at improving the involvement of men in changing attitudes towards gender norms for higher household productivity and better health.

Conflict or cooperation? Experimental evidence on intra-household allocations in Ethiopia

We explore intra-household decision-making using lab experiments with more than 200 married couples in Ethiopia. In contrast to much of the literature that highlights conflicting interests between household members, we find striking similarities in household allocation preferences and norms of men and women. In particular, men and women are equally cooperative and altruistic in anonymous games, they place equal emphasis on public household goods relative to private goods, and they have similar risk and time preferences. Men do, however, contribute more than women in intra-household public goods and dictator games. Qualitative evidence suggests that this is due to a commonly held norm that wives should be compensated for their greater responsibility in managing household expenses. A household survey conducted some days after the experiment supports the external validity of our findings.

Ask me why: Patterns of intrahousehold decision-making

•Moving beyond who decides, we use vignettes to identify why certain household members make decisions in rural Senegal.•Outcomes that appear to be related to the gender of the decision-maker are actually driven by decision-making typologies.•Households where the most informed men (women) decide produce more milk than those in which men (women) make all decisions.•Children of women who decide because they are most informed have more hemoglobin than those whose mothers make all decisions.

Future integrated mobility-energy systems: A modeling perspective

After over a century of petroleum dominance, the transportation sector is on the verge of radical transformations driven by rapid technology advancement of alternative fuels, automation, information technologies that create new mobility options and business models, and policies at all levels of government. While the technologies and fuels that will move people and goods in the future remain uncertain, the future transportation system will be more integrated with smart buildings, the electric grid, renewables, and information ecosystems, allowing for great opportunities to exploit these interconnections. Modeling tools for analyzing integrated mobility-energy systems require a deep understanding of these interconnections, of the infrastructure required to support alternative fuel vehicles, and a more nuanced understanding of transportation energy needs across multiple segments and spatiotemporal scales. In this paper, we assess the landscape of existing tools used to represent and model future mobility systems and their interactions with other energy systems. We conclude that (a) out-of-sample extrapolation of emerging trends and future anticipated developments is more important than ever due to the plethora of factors driving disruptive change in mobility systems; (b) understanding adoption opportunities for alternative fuel light-duty vehicles requires modeling intra-household decisions affecting travel demand and mode choice; (c) mobility and energy systems need to be modeled as an integrated continuum, breaking the traditional approach in which dynamic energy supply models use relatively simple transportation demand and vice-versa; and (d) increased spatiotemporal fidelity and scalability are required to dynamically couple transportation/mobility and energy supply models and capitalize on these unprecedented interconnection opportunities.

Do Cash Transfers Effect Women Empowerment? Evidence from Benazir Income Support Program of Pakistan

The literature on gender equality has investigated several factors that can raise the level of women empowerment and their role in the intra-household decision-making (Inglehart et al.; Inglehart a...

Taking power: Women’s empowerment and household Well-being in Sub-Saharan Africa

This paper examines women’s power relative to that of their husbands in 23 Sub-Saharan African countries to determine how it affects women’s health, reproductive outcomes, children’s health and children’s education. The analysis uses a novel measure of women’s empowerment that is closely linked to classical theories of power, built from spouses’ often-conflicting reports of intrahousehold decision-making. We find, as in previous literature, that well-being outcomes for women and children are often best in scenarios where the woman’s power is recognized by her husband. We also find that women taking power—assigning themselves more decision-making power than their husbands do to them—is better for her reproductive health and children’s health, but is worse for emotional violence, compared to being given power by their husbands. The results show the conceptual and analytical value of intrahousehold contention over decision-making and expand the breadth of evidence on the importance of women’s power for economic development.

Off-farm employment increases women's empowerment: Evidence from rice farms in the Philippines.

We examined intrahousehold decision making with respect to household investment in portfolios of future rice varietal trait improvements (VTIs) to increase farm households' livelihoods in Nueva Ecija, Philippines. Investment decisions were elicited using an experimental methodology based on investment games. In the investment game, couples from rice farming households were given the opportunity to invest in public rice breeding. They selected, first individually, and then jointly, a replacement rice variety to improve upon and were then asked to allocate a research endowment fund to a portfolio of VTIs. We developed a novel indicator of women's intrahousehold decision-making power (WIDMP) based on the relative Euclidean distances between the individual and joint VTI portfolios. We found that WIDMP is normally distributed; and that, on average, women had almost equal (48%) decision-making power as men (52%), revealing almost perfect gender equity in investment decision making in rice breeding. Women were slightly more empowered if they were engaged in off-farm employment and were less experienced in farming. More empowered women had a higher discount factor and based their investment decisions on anticipated future trends, rather than current or past experience. The findings not only highlight the importance of considering gender roles in technology design, adoption and extension programs, but also have broader implications in terms of women empowerment programs. Consistent with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), our evidence suggests that education and training programs need to be paired with investments generating off-farm employment opportunities to effectively increase women's bargaining power in the household.

An intra-household analysis of farmers’ perceptions of and adaptation to climate change impacts: empirical evidence from drought prone zones of Bangladesh

The agricultural sector is highly vulnerable to climate change, particularly in drought-prone environments. An understanding of perceptions, adaptation strategies, and their determinants including a gender analysis can benefit vulnerable farmers and policy makers. Using a survey of 360 farming household heads and their spouses, this study identified the intra-household perceptions and their determinants, the major strategies adopted by the farmers to adapt to climate change, and the factors that affect their adaptation decision and choice of strategies including the role of intra-household decision making in a drought prone environment of Bangladesh. The adaptation methods identified include short-duration and drought-tolerant rice varieties, supplementary irrigation for crop production, non-rice winter and horticultural crops, and improved channels for irrigation and water harvesting. Discrete choice model results indicate that age, household size, membership in any organization, access to credit, drought severity, amount of cultivated land, and agricultural subsidy significantly influence farmers’ adaptation decision and choices. Results reveal that climate change perceptions of husbands and spouses within the same households differ significantly and intra-household decision making plays a significant role in adaptation decision and selection of alternative adaptation strategies. The results would improve our understanding of farms and farming households and their climate change perceptions and adaptation choices by location and gender, thereby enabling us to outline better strategies to adapt to the changing climate.

Marching across Generations? Education Benefits and Intrahousehold Decision-Making

We investigate how families resolve an important intrafamily household allocation problem—investing in their children’s postsecondary education—in the context of the Post-9/11 GI Bill. This legisla...

What does it Mean to Make a ‘Joint’ Decision? Unpacking Intra-household Decision Making in Agriculture: Implications for Policy and Practice

Strategies to empower women in development contexts frequently address their authority to take decisions within their household, including decisions that are taken jointly by couples. Assessing empowerment in joint decision-making has traditionally followed a dichotomous approach: decisions are either joint or not, with the former associated with women’s empowerment. This paper contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the empowerment effects of joint decision-making, based on case study data from Uganda. We present survey data revealing significant gender differences in perception of decision-making over the adoption of agricultural practices and consumption expenses. Women reported joint decision-making more often than men, who presented themselves more as sole decision makers. We supplement the survey data with an in-depth study in Lodi village, where we reconstruct meanings attached to joint decision-making using focus group discussions, a decision-making game and participant observation. Reported joint decision-making included a range of practices from no conversation among partners to conversations where female spouse’s ideas are considered but the man has the final say. The findings suggest that local interpretations of joint decision-making, in at least this case of a dominantly patriarchal context, can limit its potential for assessing women’s empowerment.