Intra-household bargaining

This article studies the differential effect of targeting cash transfers to men or women on household expenditure on non-durables.

In this paper we analyze a discrete choice model for partially ordered alternatives. The alternatives are differentiated along two dimensions, the first an unordered “horizontal” dimension, and the second an ordered “vertical” dimension.

Individuals may be poor even if their household is not poor, because the intra-household distribution of resources may be unequal. We develop a model wherein the resource share of each person in a collective household - defined as their share of household consumption - may be estimated by simple linear regressions using off-the-shelf consumer expenditure micro-data.

This research project received financial support from the Amsterdam Institute for International Development (AIID), the Economic and Social Research Council via the Network for Integrated Behavioural Sciences (award no. ES/K002201/1), the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research NWO (grant no. 451-10-002), the African Study Centre Leiden, the Tinbergen Institute, and the University of East Anglia. We are grateful to the AIID and PharmAccess Foundation for sharing their survey data and supporting the research. We very much appreciate the comments from Simon Gächter, John Gathergood, and Markus Goldstein. We are very thankful for the excellent assistance in the field by Tanimola Akande, Ameen Hafsat, Marijn van der List, and the interviewer team.

We study how parental leave benefit levels affect household labor supply, family income, and child outcomes, exploiting the Speed Premium (SP) in the Swedish leave system.

In a new CSAE working paper, IFS researcher Dr Rachel Cassidy uses a randomised controlled trial to examine the link between intra-household bargaining and use of new contraceptive technologies in Mozambique.