Female Income and Family Welfare in India

描述（由申请人提供）：整个发展中国家的创收和赋权方案寻求直接增加女性收入的假设下，妇女将分配更多的资源，以家庭福利。 大量文献试图确定增加女性收入和权力的积极影响，但结果喜忧参半。该项目旨在从两个方面改进过去的研究。第一，考虑到男女收入的内移。第二，考虑到以家庭种姓衡量的基本社会结构对家庭决策的影响。特别是，一个规范为基础的家庭决策模型被认为是既解释了家庭资源分配的种姓之间的差异，以及婚姻暴力，一直与增加女性收入在许多传统经济体。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。整个茶园的气候变化引起家庭总收入和妇女收入的外生变化。同时，收入不因种姓而异，所有等级都有相同的社会服务。将利用这一独特的自然实验，在受控环境中，按种姓分别研究女性收入的外生变化对主要家庭决策和结果的影响。关注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。还将采用定性方法深入研究在这一传统社会中男性决策规范受到挑战的过程。

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.