This article uses a novel identification strategy to measure power in the household. Our strategy is to elicit women's willingness to pay to receive a cash transfer instead of their spouse receiving it. We selected participants from a sample of women who had already participated in a policy intervention in Macedonia offering poor households cash transfers conditional on having their children attending secondary school. The programme randomised transfers at the municipality level to either household heads (generally a male) or mothers. We show that women who were offered the transfer on average have stronger measured empowerment. Here, IV estimation confirms this result.
Authors
Orazio Attanasio

Research Fellow University College London
Pedro is a Professor of Economics at University College London and an economist in the IFS' Centre for Microdata Methods and Practice (cemmap).

Research Fellow Nova School of Business and Economics
Alex is an IFS Research Fellow, an Associate Professor at Nova School of Business and Economics and a Research Affiliate at the CEPR.

Research Associate Stockholm University
Ingvild, a Research Fellow, is a Professor of Economics at the Stockholm University and Principal Investigator at the Centre of Excellence FAIR.
Journal article details
- DOI
- 10.1111/ecoj.12517
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Issue
- May 2018
Suggested citation
Almås, I et al. (2018). 'Measuring and changing control: women's empowerment and targeted transfers' (2018)
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