Female Income and Family Welfare in India

描述（由申请人提供）：在整个发展中国家，创收和赋权项目都在寻求直接增加女性收入，其假设是女性将更多的资源分配给家庭福利。大量文献试图确定增加女性收入和权力的积极影响，但结果好坏参半。这个项目试图从两个方面改进过去的研究。首先，考虑男性和女性收入的内生性。其次，通过考虑底层社会结构（以家庭种姓衡量）对家庭决策的影响。特别是，本文考虑了一个基于规范的家庭决策模型，该模型既解释了不同种姓家庭资源分配的差异，也解释了许多传统经济体中与女性收入增加有关的婚姻暴力。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。茶园的气候变化导致家庭总收入和女性收入的外生变化。与此同时，收入不会因种姓而异，所有阶层都有相同的社会服务。这个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，在一个受控的环境中，按种姓分开。感兴趣的主要结果包括儿童健康、教育、婚姻、储蓄和退休决定以及婚姻冲突。定性方法也将用于深入研究男性决策规范在这个传统社会中受到挑战的过程。

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.