Estimating the endogenously determined intrahousehold balance of power and its impact on expenditure pattern: evidence from Nepal

Type Report
Title Estimating the endogenously determined intrahousehold balance of power and its impact on expenditure pattern: evidence from Nepal
Author(s)
Publication (Day/Month/Year) 2002
URL http://econpapers.repec.org/RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:2814
Abstract
The collective approach to household behavior relaxes the restrictive features of the unitary model by specifying household welfare as a weighted combination of the individuals'utilities. But the weights are assumed fixed or exogenous to the analysis. The authors extend the collective approach by proposing and estimating a framework where the weights are determined and simultaneously estimated with the household outcomes. The authors present Nepalese evidence that suggests that a woman's share of household earnings understates her"power"in making household decisions. An increase in the woman's educational experience leads to a rise in her bargaining power. The results also reveal some interesting nonmonotonic relationships between a woman's"power"and the household's expenditure outcomes.

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