Who Wears the Pants? Gender Identity Norms and Intrahousehold Financial Decision‐Making

By Da Ke. Journal of Finance, 2017

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Analyzing microdata covering more than 30 million U.S. households, I document that families with a financially sophisticated husband are more likely to participate in the stock market than those with a wife of equal financial sophistication. This pattern is best explained by gender norms, which constrain women's influence over intra-household financial decision making. Consistent with this interpretation, the baseline effect is attenuated among individuals brought up by working mothers, but becomes stronger among descendants of pre-industrial societies in which women specialized in activities within the home and households with a husband born and raised in a southern state. A randomized controlled experiment further reveals that female identity hinders idea contribution by the wife. In contrast, male identity causes men to be less open to an opposing viewpoint of their wife, even if her proposition is optimal. These findings suggest that gender identity norms can have real consequences for household financial well-being.

Subfields: Accounting, Demography, Gender Studies

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/723bdd8a57eb25a926bd8b213442574477f99b82