Intra-household responsibilities and financial decisions

ended

Much of today’s policies addressing poor’s welfare are based on the presumption that women are more likely than men to use income in ways that improve household welfare. An approach of predominantly targeting women however may overlook opportunities from how men could be encouraged to contribute more to the household welfare. I develop a framework that joins empirical and theoretical findings on intra-household allocations and gender norms in developing countries by incorporating the role of intra-household responsibilities in spouses’ financial decisions. I use a lab-in-the-field experiment with spouses in Ghana to map these intra-household responsibilities and evaluate their causal role on spouses’ expenditures and inter-temporal decisions. By demonstrating causes of inefficiencies in resource allocation and low savings, my findings may help to inform on how women’s role can be strengthened and on the potential for harnessing men’s role in improving the household welfare.