IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/tpr/restat/v94y2012i2p552-565.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Gender Bias in Intrahousehold Allocation: Evidence from an Unintentional Experiment

Author

Listed:
  • Luis H. B. Braido

    (Getulio Vargas Foundation, Graduate School of Economics)

  • Pedro Olinto

    (World Bank)

  • Helena Perrone

    (Universitat Pompeu Fabra and Barcelona GSE)

Abstract

We use data from a Brazilian social program to investigate the existence of gender bias in intrahousehold allocations of resources. The program makes cash transfers to mothers and pregnant women in poor households. Bureaucratic mistakes, beyond the control of the applicants, have inadvertently excluded many households that had applied and were accepted to the program. This unintentional natural experiment is used to identify the impact of an exogenous variation in female nonlabor income over household consumption. We find that program participation led to an increase in food expenditure, but this effect is not due to women being the benefit recipients. © 2012 The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Suggested Citation

  • Luis H. B. Braido & Pedro Olinto & Helena Perrone, 2012. "Gender Bias in Intrahousehold Allocation: Evidence from an Unintentional Experiment," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 94(2), pages 552-565, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:tpr:restat:v:94:y:2012:i:2:p:552-565
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/REST_a_00205
    File Function: link to full text PDF
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gentilini,Ugo, 2016. "The revival of the"cash versus food"debate : new evidence for an old quandary ?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 7584, The World Bank.
    2. Eleni Karagiannaki & Tania Burchardt, 2024. "Living Arrangements, Intra-Household Inequality and Children’s Deprivation: Evidence from EU-SILC," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 17(5), pages 2319-2359, October.
    3. Sevias Guvuriro & Frederik Booysen, 2021. "Family‐type public goods and intra‐household decision‐making by co‐resident South African couples," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(3), pages 1629-1647, August.
    4. Ryckembusch, David & Frega, Romeo & Silva, Marcio Guilherme & Gentilini, Ugo & Sanogo, Issa & Grede, Nils & Brown, Lynn, 2013. "Enhancing Nutrition: A New Tool for Ex-Ante Comparison of Commodity-based Vouchers and Food Transfers," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 58-67.
    5. Paul Fisher, 2016. "British tax credit simplification, the intra-household distribution of income and family consumption," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 68(2), pages 444-464.
    6. Noray, Savannah & Janzen, Sarah A., 2017. "Household Migration and Expenditure Decisions," 2017 Annual Meeting, July 30-August 1, Chicago, Illinois 258539, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    7. Sergii Maksymovych, 2017. "Decision-Making in the Household and Material Deprivation," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp604, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
    8. David K. Evans & Anna Popova, 2017. "Cash Transfers and Temptation Goods," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65(2), pages 189-221.
    9. Gentilini, Ugo, 2014. "Our daily bread : what is the evidence on comparing cash versus food transfers?," Social Protection Discussion Papers and Notes 89502, The World Bank.
    10. Leight, Jessica & Hirvonen, Kalle & Zafar, Sarim, 2024. "The effectiveness of cash and cash plus interventions on livelihoods outcomes: Evidence from a systematic review and meta-analysis," OSF Preprints dnc2r, Center for Open Science.
    11. Momi Dahan, 2021. "Poverty and economic behavior: gambling on social security paydays," International Gambling Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(1), pages 38-58, January.
    12. Karen Mumford & Antonia Parera‐Nicolau & Yolanda Pena‐Boquete, 2020. "Labour Supply and Childcare: Allowing Both Parents to Choose," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 82(3), pages 577-602, June.
    13. Sarah Reynolds, 2015. "Behavioral games and intrahousehold allocation: teenage mothers and their mothers in Brazil," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 13(4), pages 901-927, December.
    14. Panayiota Lyssiotou, 2018. "Gender bias in the spending of child benefits: evidence from a natural policy reform," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 25(4), pages 1029-1070, August.
    15. Dragan Filipovich & Miguel Niño-Zarazúa & Alma Santillán Hernández, 2018. "Campaign externalities, programmatic spending, and voting preferences in rural Mexico: The case of Progresa-Oportunidades-Prospera programme," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2018-27, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    16. Tania Burchardt & Eleni Karagiannaki, 2022. "Living arrangements, intra-household inequality and children’s deprivation: Evidence from EU-SILC," CASE Papers /227, Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, LSE.
    17. Dahan, Momi & Sayag, Doron, 2024. "Scarcity and consumption priorities," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 108(C).
    18. Artuc Erhan & Depetris Chauvin Nicolas & Porto Guido & Rijkers Bob, 2023. "Protectionism and Gender Inequality in Developing Countries," Journal of Globalization and Development, De Gruyter, vol. 14(2), pages 177-222, December.
    19. Karagiannaki, Eleni & Burchardt, Tania, 2022. "Living arrangements, intra-household inequality and children's deprivation: evidence from EU-SILC," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 121532, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    20. Dragan Filipovich & Miguel Niño-Zarazúa & Alma Santillán Hernández, 2018. "Campaign externalities, programmatic spending, and voting preferences in rural Mexico: The case of Progresa-Oportunidades-Prospera programme," WIDER Working Paper Series 027, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    21. Ariel Fiszbein & Norbert Schady & Francisco H.G. Ferreira & Margaret Grosh & Niall Keleher & Pedro Olinto & Emmanuel Skoufias, 2009. "Conditional Cash Transfers : Reducing Present and Future Poverty," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 2597.
    22. Jean A. Junior & Arlene M. Katz & Roy Ahn, 2016. "The Perspectives of Young Women in Rural Western Kenya on Unconditional Cash Transfers," Poverty & Public Policy, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 8(1), pages 72-94, March.
    23. Cruz, Marcio & Ziegelhofer, Zacharias, 2014. "Beyond the income effect : impacts of conditional cash transfer programs on private investments in human capital," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6867, The World Bank.
    24. Salti, Nisreen & Chaaban, Jad & Moussa, Wael & Irani, Alexandra & Al Mokdad, Rima & Jamaluddine, Zeina & Ghattas, Hala, 2022. "The impact of cash transfers on Syrian refugees in Lebanon: Evidence from a multidimensional regression discontinuity design," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 155(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Bolsa Alimentação; Gender Bias; Collective Approach; Household Bargain; Unitary Model;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • O54 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Latin America; Caribbean
    • H31 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - Household

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:tpr:restat:v:94:y:2012:i:2:p:552-565. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: The MIT Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://direct.mit.edu/journals .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.