Intrahousehold Bargaining and Resource Allocation in Developing Countries

By Cheryl R. Doss. 2013

740 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Many key development outcomes depend on women's ability to negotiate favorable intrahousehold allocations of resources. Yet it has been difficult to clearly identify which policies can increase women's bargaining power and result in better outcomes. This paper reviews both the analytical frameworks and the empirical evidence on the importance of women's bargaining power. It argues that there is sufficient evidence from rigorous studies to conclude that women's bargaining power does affect outcomes. But in many specific instances, the quantitative evidence cannot rigorously identify causality. In these cases, a combination of quantitative and qualitative evidence may suggest policy levers. Taken together, there are sufficient data in place to support a greatly expanded focus on intrahousehold outcomes and bargaining power. Additional data at the individual level will allow for further and more detailed research. A growing literature supports the current conventional wisdom -- namely, that the patterns of evidence suggest that women's education, incomes, and assets all are important aspects of women's bargaining power.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Gender Studies, Safety Research

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6ea6207e7af057475bf8603f2ee687bf8ac44d46

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Citations in the corpus

On the impact of early marriage on schooling outcomes in sub-Saharan Africa and South West Asia (2015, background): “The argument behind its strong effect is that the extent of freedom of movement and autonomy in decisionmaking for women is a sign of social norms of societies and cultural traits (Doss, 2013).”
The causal effect of maternal age at marriage on child wellbeing: Evidence from India (2017, neutral): “" Reproductive Health Matters, 9(17), 16-25.”
Measuring women’s decisionmaking: Indicator choice and survey design experiments from cash and food transfer evaluations in Ecuador, Uganda and Yemen (2015, background): “Doss (2013) reviews four different frameworks that have been used to investigate different components of intrahousehold bargaining, resource allocation, and decisionmaking in economics.”
The Cost of Convenience? (2017, neutral): “Selfreported decision-making measures like these have also been widely used as indicators of bargaining power (see Doss (2013) for a review).”
Women’s Empowerment and Prevalence of Stunted and Underweight Children in Rural India (2014, background): “children’s nutritional status) (Doss, 2013), greater power of decision making, absence of domestic violence, or a combination of these factors.”
The role of financial inclusion in driving women’s economic empowerment (2019, background): “These barriers include low intra-household bargaining power, social norms that dictate women ’ s earnings are at the command of male family members, and gendered mobility restrictions that can reduce women ’ s ability to access ﬁ nancial services and mobile money agents (Du ﬂ o 2012; Doss 2013).”
Smart, Responsible, and Upper Caste Only: Measuring Caste Attitudes through Large-Scale Analysis of Matrimonial Profiles (2019, background): “However, our result on the impact of the mother’s employment closely mirrors their result on the mother’s education (both associated with increases in openness), given that employment and education are associated (Thomas 1990; Doss 2013).”
Gender Dimensions of Disaster Risk and Resilience (2021, background): “This, in turn, lowers female bargaining power within the household (Doss 2013).”
What does it Mean to Make a ‘Joint’ Decision? Unpacking Intra-household Decision Making in Agriculture: Implications for Policy and Practice (2020, background): “As Doss (2013) explains, survey questions surrounding who in the household makes decisions are believed to capture, at least partially, women’s bargaining power and therefore how involved and influential women are in decision-making.”
Does Women’s Land Ownership Promote Their Empowerment? Empirical Evidence from Nepal (2016, background): “…studies, this increase in women’s autonomy is expected to translate into a redirection of resources toward women’s preferences, including higher investment in human capital of the household such as education, health and nutrition (Aslam & Kingdon, 2012; Doss, 2006, 2013; Menon et al., 2014).”
Stacking up the ladder: A panel data analysis of Tanzanian household energy choices (2017, background): “…shows the importance of intra-household bargaining on household decisions related to farming (Anderson et al., 2017), and more generally theoretical research highlights the relationship between intra-household distribution of power and household behaviour (Chiappori and Meghir, 2014; Doss, 2013).”
Educational Impacts and Cost-Effectiveness of Conditional Cash Transfer Programs in Developing Countries: A Meta-Analysis (2017, neutral): “evidence rejects the unitary household model in favor or an alternative collective bargaining household model (e.g., Doss, 2013; Haddad, Hoddinott, & Alderman, 1997).”