To Defer or to Differ: Experimental Evidence on the Role of Cash Transfers in Nigerian Couples’ Decision-Making
The Economic Journal · 2024 · M. Mehrab Bakhtiar、Marcel Fafchamps、Markus Goldstein、Kenneth L. Leonard、Sreelakshmi Papineni
中文摘要
我们开展了一项原创性的实地实验室实验，研究已婚夫妻在竞争性和非竞争性家庭物品分配上的决策过程。该实验测量了个人对不同分配方案的偏好，并追踪了夫妻通过让渡决策、协商、沟通和迁就来实现这些偏好的过程。我们发现，个人对物品分配方案的偏好差异很小。然而，妻子和丈夫对决策过程本身有强烈的偏好：即使让渡决策需要付出代价，且这一行为不被丈夫察觉，女性仍倾向于将决定权让渡给丈夫；男性则几乎在任何条件下都很少让渡决策。本研究是对一项一年前结束的随机对照试验的后续跟进，该试验在十八个月内向研究样本中一半的女性提供了大额现金转移支付。我们估计了处理对女性自主权需求的影响，发现除非是在让渡决定对丈夫保密的秘密条件下，接受现金转移支付并未改变女性的议价过程。这表明，向女性提供现金转移支付提高了她们对自主权的需求，但并未充分改变家庭内部的权力平衡，以至于让她们能够公开表达这种需求。
Abstract
Abstract We conduct an original lab-in-the-field experiment on the decision-making process of married couples over the allocation of rival and non-rival household goods. The experiment measures individual preferences over allocations and traces the process of deferral, consultation, communication and accommodation by which couples implement these preferences. We find few differences in individual preferences over allocations of goods. However, wives and husbands have strong preferences over process: women prefer to defer decisions to their husbands even when deferral is costly and is not observed by the husband; men rarely defer under any condition. Our study follows a randomised controlled trial that ended a year earlier and gave large cash transfers over eighteen months to half of the women in the study. We estimate the effect of treatment on the demand for agency among women and find that the receipt of cash transfers does not change women’s bargaining process except in a secret condition when the decision to defer is shrouded from her husband. This suggests that the cash transfer to women increases their demand for agency, but does not change the intrahousehold balance of power enough to allow them to express it publicly.