Income-generation and empowerment programs throughout the developing world seek to directly increase female income under the assumption that women will allocate more resources to family welfare. A large literature has attempted to identify the positive effect of increasing female income and power, but with mixed results. This project seeks to improve on past studies in two ways. First, by accounting for the endogeneity of male and female incomes. Second, by accounting for the effect of the underlying social structure, measured by the household's caste, on household decision-making. In particular, a norm-based model of household decision-making is considered that explains both the variation in household resource allocation across castes as well as the marital violence that has been associated with increasing female income in many traditional economies. The investigators have collected an extensive data set from 23 tea estates owned by a single company in Kerala, South India. Climatic variation across tea estates gives rise to exogenous variation in total household income as well as female income. At the same time, incomes do not vary by caste and all estates have identical social services. This unique natural experiment will be exploited to study the effect of exogenous variation in female income on major household decisions and outcomes, separately by caste, in a controlled environment. The main outcomes of interest include child health, education, and marriage, savings and retirement decisions, and marital conflict. Qualitative methods will also be used to study in depth the process by which norms of male decision-making are challenged in this traditional society.
| Luke, Nancy; Xu, Hongwei; Thampi, Binitha V (2014) Husbands' Participation in Housework and Child Care in India. J Marriage Fam 76:620-637 |
| Azar, Sandra; Robinson, Lara; Proctor, Stephon (2012) Chronic Neglect and Services Without Borders: A Guiding Model for Social Service Enhancement to Address the Needs of Parents With Intellectual Disabilities. J Ment Health Res Intellect Disabil 5:130-156 |
| Luke, Nancy; Munshi, Kaivan (2011) Women as agents of change: Female income and mobility in India. J Dev Econ 94:1-17 |
| Luke, Nancy; Xu, Hongwei (2011) Exploring the meaning of context for health: Community influences on child health in South India. Demogr Res 24:345-374 |
| Eeckhout, Jan; Munshi, Kaivan (2010) MATCHING IN INFORMAL FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS. J Eur Econ Assoc 8:947-988 |
| Luke, Nancy; Munshi, Kaivan (2007) Social Affiliation and the Demand for Health Services: Caste and Child Health in South India. J Dev Econ 83:256-279 |
