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Gender Inequality and Intra-Household Bargaining

Paper Session

Saturday, Jan. 6, 2018 12:30 PM - 2:15 PM

Loews Philadelphia, Parlor 2
Hosted By: International Association for Feminist Economics
  • Chair: Diana Strassmann, Rice University

Women’s Asset Ownership and Children’s Nutritional Status: Evidence From Papua New Guinea

Yana Rodgers
,
Rutgers University
Alice Kassens
,
Roanoke College

Abstract

Previous evidence has shown that additional income concentrated in the hands of women result in positive benefits to children, but few studies have traced the effects of women's asset ownership on children's health, mostly because there is so little sex-disaggregated information on asset ownership. This project uses household survey data from Papua New Guinea in which women's asset ownership is measured by sex-disaggregated data on livestock, poultry, agricultural equipment, fishing equipment, house/apartment, and furniture/household goods. Child health is measured by low weight-for-height (wasting) and low height-for-age (stunting). The methodology entails estimating a series of nested models that successively introduce child characteristics, socioeconomic factors, household composition, and measures of household environmental factors that affect the determinants of child health. This format ensures that the methodology tests alternative mechanisms for how women's asset ownership relates to children's nutritional status, in isolation and in a full model that includes all of the explanatory variables. The results will help policy makers, development partners, and civil society groups better understand the status of women and children in Papua New Guinea. Access to data on ownership of livestock also allows us to contribute to current debates on the potential benefits of livestock ownership for child health through their increased animal-source protein intake.

Sibling Gender Composition and Participation in STEM Education

Anne Brenøe
,
University of Copenhagen

Abstract

This paper studies the causal impact of sibling gender composition on participation in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education. I focus on a sample of first-born children who all have a younger biological sibling, using rich administrative data on the total Danish population. The randomness of the second-born siblings' gender allows me to estimate the causal effect of having an opposite sex sibling relative to a same sex sibling. The results are robust to family size and show that having a second-born opposite sex sibling makes first-born men more and women less likely to enroll in a STEM program. Although sibling gender composition has no impact on men's probability of actually completing a STEM degree, it has a powerful effect on women's success within these fields: women with a younger brother are eleven percent less likely to complete any field-specific STEM education relative to women with a sister. I provide evidence that parents of mixed sex children gender-specialize their parenting more than parents of same sex children. These findings indicate that the family environment plays in important role for shaping interests in STEM fields.

Women's Self-help Group Participation and Domestic Violence: Impact Evaluation With Consideration of Dowry in Andhra Pradesh, India

Susana Lastarria-Cornhiel
,
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Nozomi Sato
,
University of Kobe

Abstract

In rural India, women’s Self-Help Groups (SHGs) have been used as a fundamental instrument for women's empowerment and poverty alleviation. Additionally, forming SHGs has been a vehicle for the delivery of microfinance services to poor women. This study explores the impact of SHG participation on the frequency of domestic violence and also examine if the impact is heterogeneous depending on conventional practice, namely dowry. This study, using household panel data collected in rural Andhra Pradesh in 2004, 2006 and 2007, employs double difference methodology with an instrumental-variables approach to address the endogeneity problem due to non-random SHG participation decisions. The estimation results revealed that, while SHG participation reduced domestic violence in the short-run, longer-term participation raised the frequency of domestic violence. We conjecture that, while the decline in the frequency of domestic violence in the short-run is a result of women’s social action activities, an increase in the frequency of domestic violence in the long-run is attributable to an improved access to microfinance services. Furthermore, this study found that the impact of SHG participation on the frequency of domestic violence was more evident among those who married with dowry. Those who married with dowry appear to be more susceptible to financial inflow through the wife’s hand.

Are Partnered Women "Added Workers"? Evidence from Women's Labour Force Participation in the UK

Melisa Sayli
,
University of Manchester

Abstract

I examine whether and how an inactive married or cohabiting woman’s participation decision is influenced by her partner's different labour market activities and investigate the effect of the time she spends away from the labour market on her labour supply decision. Using a panel of couples' monthly labour market histories that I constructed from the British Household Panel Survey 1991-2009, I show that there is significant negative duration dependence in woman's participation, which is strongest in the first three years of her inactivity. A woman with an unemployed partner is 23% less likely to enter the labour market than a woman whose partner is employed, i.e. a negative added worker effect. On the other hand, a woman's labour supply decision depends on her partner's labour market activity, and a woman with an inactive partner is more likely to participate in the labour force than a woman whose partner is unemployed. The duration dependence and the added worker effect do not vary by the way a woman enters the labour force, i.e. via job-finding or job-search; however, claiming income support or unemployment benefit within an interview year has destination specific effects as it increases the probability of a woman's participation via job-search rather than job-finding.
Discussant(s)
Yana Rodgers
,
Rutgers University
Joyce Jacobsen
,
Wesleyan University
JEL Classifications
  • B5 - Current Heterodox Approaches
  • D1 - Household Behavior and Family Economics