Matthew Klein is a 4th year PhD candidate at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, in the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics. Follow him on twitter: @matt_hanhat.
Men benefit more than women from engaging with many institutions and markets. Economists have long sought to document the extent of these gender inequalities and determine which policies effectively reduce them. An exciting aspect of the many panels and papers devoted to studying gender at the 16th annual Midwestern International Economic Development Conference (#MidDev) was the breadth of research methods employed. To draw a general conclusion about development economics from this sample, economists are using an incredibly wide variety of tools to understand how patriarchy manifests in different contexts.
Researchers Vinish Shrestha and Joao Montalvao presented results from randomized controlled trials. Shrestha studies the determinants of sanitary pad use in Nepal, and Montalvo estimates demand for joint land titling in Uganda. These authors used multiple treatments to identify the mechanisms driving the results, learning simultaneously about the role of information and prices in determining demand. Montalvao and coauthors find that information and price subsidies can each increase the likelihood that households take up joint land titles. Shrestha and his coauthor find that information and price interventions work together to increase demand for health products, counteracting the effects of taboos surrounding menstruation in rural Nepal.
Many researchers tailored models of the family to their specific context. Jose Casco estimated a collective model to understand women’s empowerment leads women to reallocate their time. Similarly, Bradford Barham presented a constrained collective model that he used to understand how cash transfers improve women’s outside options, improving their bargaining positions and subsequently increasing household demand for healthy foods. Catherine Bros developed a model that distinguishes between power and agency, demonstrating the importance of accounting for household bargaining structures in understanding the division of surplus across family members.
There were also methods that don’t fall neatly into the categories above – these were among the most exciting. Lokendra Phadera studied survey village-level data to document how civil war can reduce women’s and girl’s health across generations. James Jones analyzed how reductions in the gender pay gap can prompt backlash behavior – men use violence to reinforce power dynamics when pay gaps change, especially in areas with relatively low male educational attainment. Jessica Hoel used games in the field to document interesting and profound inefficiencies in household production decisions in polygamous families in Senegal. Sadia Priyanka showed that young women who live in states with greater gender equality in political representation have better labor market outcomes.
Certain themes ran throughout these varied studies. Women’s outside options are important determinants of the gendered division of surplus in the family, and in labor markets. Policy makers can influence the division of power in the family, and in society more broadly, by strengthening women’s property rights, targeting benefits directly to women, and distributing information to combat gender stereotypes. Across the world, as this group of researchers demonstrated this past weekend, governments and NGOs are reducing inequality by using exactly these policy levers.
Economists are innovative in the tools they use to understand inequality and what policies can reduce it. The papers presented at MWIEDC clearly demonstrate the value of not taking a cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all approach to understanding and reducing inequality.
