Project description
Encouraging men to improve household welfare
Women and men spend differently. Studies show that women typically invest a higher proportion of their earnings in their families and save more than men do. To promote female empowerment and child welfare, numerous developmental aid programmes allocate resources to women only. In this context, the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions project IntraHouseDecisions will explore whether this approach overlooks opportunities for men to contribute to the household's welfare and how policies can be adjusted to better combat poverty. The project intends to 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 and collect empirical evidence with a lab-in-the field experiment in Ghana.
Objective
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.
Fields of science
Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European FellowshipsCoordinator
8000 Aarhus C
Denmark