中文摘要
分析儿童的能动性对于理解家庭内部运行机制至关重要。这一问题在发展中国家尤为突出，因为无子女家庭在人口中所占比例很小。本研究利用集体家庭模型所蕴含的一项限制，检验孟加拉国农村符合工作条件的儿童（12–17岁）的家庭内部决策权。通过比较有工作儿童与无工作儿童的家庭，本研究还检验了工作儿童是否比非工作儿童在家庭中拥有更大的发言权。研究结果表明，存在儿童具有决策权的一些证据。单一家庭模型被强烈拒绝，且没有证据反对帕累托效率。这些结果对于日益增长的一类研究尤其有用——该类研究在关于儿童决策权的特定假设下，利用集体模型估计发展中国家的家庭内部不平等与个体层面贫困。除考察儿童在家庭中的发言权外，本研究还处理了文献中关于替代性集体模型与帕累托效率的基于价格检验方法所涉及的若干方法论问题。
Abstract
Analyzing children’s agency is crucial for understanding the inner workings of households. This issue is especially salient for developing countries, as childless families constitute a small portion of the population. This study tests the intra-household decision-making power of work-eligible children (age 12–17) in rural Bangladesh using a restriction implied by the collective household model. By comparing households with working and non-working children, the study also tests whether working children have a greater say in their households than non-working ones. The findings suggest some evidence for children’s decision-making power. The unitary household model is strongly rejected, and there is no evidence against Pareto efficiency. The results are particularly useful for the growing body of research that estimates intra-household inequality and individual-level poverty in developing countries using the collective model with certain assumptions on children’s decision-making power. In addition to investigating children’s say in the household, the study addresses several methodological issues in the literature regarding the price-based test of alternative collective models and Pareto efficiency.