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Women and Household Cash Management: Evidence from Financial Diaries in India

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  • Rajalaxmi Kamath

    (Indian Institute of Management Bangalore)

  • Abhi Dattasharma

    (Independent Researcher)

Abstract

Using an innovative data set that involved 90 poor women logging in daily household financial diaries for a period of 11 months in 2008–2009 in the town of Ramanagaram, Karnataka, India, we address the following question: Do women use money differently from men? Comparing weekly cash expenses of 19 female-headed households with similar male-headed households, we arrived at several nuanced conclusions. For example, among the poorest households, women showed a greater tendency towards spending household cash on food items and they spent less on fuel and entertainment as compared with the male-headed households. Among the microfinance borrowers in our sample, the poorest among the female-headed households showed spending on jewellery, in contrast to the borrowers in the male-headed households spending on household assets. The fact that financial diaries data are more fine-grained and detailed than one-off surveys allows us to generalize these results for the urban-poor working in the informal sector.

Suggested Citation

  • Rajalaxmi Kamath & Abhi Dattasharma, 2017. "Women and Household Cash Management: Evidence from Financial Diaries in India," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 29(1), pages 73-92, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:eurjdr:v:29:y:2017:i:1:d:10.1057_ejdr.2015.79
    DOI: 10.1057/ejdr.2015.79
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