Lost in Interpretation : Why Spouses Disagree on Who Makes Decisions
Across a wide variety of regions and contexts, surveys have found high rates of disagreement within couples on matters of household decision making. Using a unique data set from a spousal survey of 421 agricultural households in the Philippines, th...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2021
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/undefined/169581639491956591/Lost-in-Interpretation-Why-Spouses-Disagree-on-Who-Makes-Decisions http://hdl.handle.net/10986/36741 |
| Summary: | Across a wide variety of regions and
contexts, surveys have found high rates of disagreement
within couples on matters of household decision making.
Using a unique data set from a spousal survey of 421
agricultural households in the Philippines, this paper finds
that 50.2 percent of couples disagree about who makes any
given decision in the household. The paper systematically
explores the empirical relevance of theoretical explanations
from the existing literature for this spousal disagreement.
Spouses are no more likely to agree on specific decisions
compared with general decision making, are more likely to
agree on the decision-making process, and are less likely to
agree on decision making for activities in which both take
part. Moreover, women are more likely to report that their
husbands were involved in decision making when speaking with
a female enumerator. The findings suggest that
intrahousehold disagreement is not driven by differing
interpretations of which decisions count as “major,” or by
asymmetric information. Although the paper finds evidence of
enumerator effects, their magnitude is small and cannot
explain the observed rates of spousal disagreement over
decision making. Rather, spousal disagreement appears to
stem primarily from systematic gender differences in
interpreting what it means to be a decision maker. The paper
discusses the implications of the findings for the
measurement of intrahousehold decision making in household surveys. |
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