Stronger Together : Intra-Household Cooperation and Household Welfare in Malawi
It has long been recognized that household decision-making may not result in outcomes consistent with the unitary household model. Within the collective bargaining framework, consumption decisions would be driven by the spouse with greater bargaini...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2017
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/352721493213579147/Stronger-together-intra-household-cooperation-and-household-welfare-in-Malawi http://hdl.handle.net/10986/26482 |
| Summary: | It has long been recognized that
household decision-making may not result in outcomes
consistent with the unitary household model. Within the
collective bargaining framework, consumption decisions would
be driven by the spouse with greater bargaining power, while
the outcomes would still be Pareto efficient. Within the
non-cooperative framework, households would not achieve
Pareto efficient outcomes, and under the simplest
representation, bargaining power would not affect
consumption decisions. This paper develops a model that
allows consumption patterns and labor supply to be affected
by both bargaining power and non-cooperation. The model
highlights the potential gains from improving bargaining
power versus increasing cooperation between spouses, and
presents conditions under which relatively large gains would
be expected from moving to more equitable bargaining power
versus achieving intra-household cooperation. The
model's predictions are in turn tested using a unique
panel data set on married couples in rural Malawi. The
analysis shows that, relative to increasing wives'
bargaining power, improving cooperation between spouses
would exert larger and statistically significant positive
impacts on total household income and consumption
expenditures per capita, as well as the share of household
consumption devoted to public goods. Supported also by
cross-country qualitative research, the results suggest that
household public goods are relatively important to both
women and men in rural Malawi, husbands' capacity to
control wives' incomes is relatively limited, and
development programs that promote intra-household
cooperation could lead to greater gains in income and
household public goods provision compared with interventions
focusing exclusively on women's empowerment. |
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