In many low-income countries, development programmes and cash-transfer initiatives target women under the assumption that this improves household welfare. These approaches draw on evidence that women tend to spend more on children’s wellbeing and basic needs. Yet, emerging research suggests that men also play an important, if different, role in promoting household welfare. Focusing solely on women may therefore overlook how both spouses contribute to managing household resources and how social expectations shape these roles.
This project investigates how social norms influence the financial decisions made by couples in rural Ghana. It focuses on intra-household responsibilities—the areas of expenditure that each spouse is considered responsible for, such as daily consumption, child-related spending, or farm investment. These responsibilities are not fixed: they are shaped by local norms and may depend on who earns the income and how it is distributed between spouses. Understanding these dynamics is essential for designing financial and aid policies that both empower women and harness men’s contributions to household welfare.
The project’s overall objective is to develop a theoretical and empirical framework that explains how the distribution of income between husbands and wives affects social norms of spending responsibility and, in turn, actual household expenditures. The research combines theory, qualitative fieldwork, and experimental methods to measure how norms of financial responsibility vary with income sources and gender. By linking social norms directly to financial behaviour, the project aims to identify when and why households make inefficient spending decisions and how policy interventions might reduce such inefficiencies. A third component of the project examines how social norms of responsibility shape saving and investment decisions over time, including how households balance present consumption against future-oriented financial choices.
Ultimately, the project concludes that understanding household financial behaviour requires explicit attention to social norms governing who is responsible for different types of expenditure. These norms shape day-to-day spending decisions. The project shows that such responsibilities are context-specific and closely linked to income sources and gender roles, implying that financial and aid interventions are more likely to be effective when they recognize and address existing intra-household norms. By integrating social norms into models of household decision-making, the project provides a framework for designing policies that improve both the efficiency and equity of household resource allocation.
