Female Income and Family Welfare in India

描述(申请人提供)：整个发展中世界的创收和赋权方案寻求在妇女将更多资源分配给家庭福利的假设下直接增加妇女的收入。一大批文献试图确定增加女性收入和权力的积极影响，但结果喜忧参半。这个项目寻求从两个方面改进过去的研究。首先，考虑到男性和女性收入的内生性。第二，考虑到潜在的社会结构对家庭决策的影响，这是以家庭的种姓来衡量的。特别是，考虑了一种基于规范的家庭决策模式，该模式既解释了家庭资源分配在不同种姓之间的差异，也解释了在许多传统经济中与增加妇女收入有关的婚姻暴力。调查人员从印度南部喀拉拉邦一家公司拥有的23个茶园收集了大量数据。不同茶园的气候差异导致家庭总收入和女性收入的外生差异。同时，收入不因种姓而异，所有庄园都有相同的社会服务。这一独特的自然实验将被用来研究女性收入的外生变化对主要家庭决策和结果的影响，分别按种姓在受控环境中进行。关注的主要结果包括儿童健康、教育和婚姻、储蓄和退休决定以及婚姻冲突。还将使用定性方法深入研究在这个传统社会中男性决策准则受到挑战的过程。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): 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.