Female Empowerment and the Intrinsic Demand for Agency: Experimental Evidence from Nigeria; Dr M. Mehrab Bakhtiar (International Food Policy Research Institute)

Abstract

Most studies of intrahousehold bargaining examine outcomes. We conduct an original lab-in-the-field experiment on the decision-making process of couples over the allocation of household rival and non-rival goods. The experiment measures individual preferences over allocations and traces the process of consultation, communication, deferral, and accommodation by which spouses implement these preferences. We find few differences in the spouse’s individual preferences over allocations. But wives and husbands have strong preferences over process: women prefer to defer budget allocation decisions to their husband even when deferral is costly and is not observed by the husband; the reverse is true for husbands. Since the study is paired with a randomized cash transfer, we estimate the effect of treatment on the demand for agency among women. We find that receiving cash transfers over several months does not change women’s bargaining process, except when the decision to defer is hidden from the husband. In that case, having received the transfer in the past increases female demand for agency: women in the cash transfer treatment want to secretly make their own budget allocation decisions, even if it is the same as their husband’s.

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