Investments, Time Preferences, and Public Transfers Paid to Women

Abstract

The literature suggests men and women may have different preferences. This paper exploits a social experiment in which women in treatment households were given a large public cash transfer (PROGRESA). In an effort to disentangle the effect of additional income in the household from the effect of changing the distribution of income within the household, the impact of PROGRESA income on savings and investments decisions is compared with all other income sources (after taking into account participation in the program). Additional money in the hands of women is spent on small livestock (which are traditionally managed and cared for by women), improved nutrition and on child goods (particularly clothing). Among single headed households, PROGRESA income is not treated differently from other income. Direct evidence on inter-temporal preferences gathered in the Mexican Family Live Survey indicates that women are more patient than males when thinking about the future. Taken together, the results suggest that PROGRESA income results in a shift in the balance of power within households and women allocated more resources towards investments in the future.

Economic impacts of conditional cash transfer programmes: a systematic review and meta-analysis

“…However, the interesting finding is that within these same programmes, food and total consumption were found to increase by equivalent proportions. Other studies, for which we were not able to estimate effect sizes, also found that both total and food consumption increased as a result of the transfer including in Nicaragua (Maluccio, 2007;Gitter and Caldes, 2010) as well as urban (Angelucci and Attanasio, 2006) and rural Mexico (Rubalcava et al 2009). …”

“…Mexico, transfers to women in couple headed households resulted in higher quality nutritional intake, purchases of children's clothing and female associated forms of investment, but not in households headed by a single parent, whether male or female (Rubalcava et al 2009). The proportion of the transfer income consumed was estimated between 80 and 90 percent in Brazil (Resende and Oliveira, 2008), Colombia (Angelucci and Attanasio, 2006) and Mexico (Gertler et al 2006).…”

“…The proportion of the transfer income consumed was estimated between 80 and 90 percent in Brazil (Resende and Oliveira, 2008), Colombia (Angelucci and Attanasio, 2006) and Mexico (Gertler et al 2006). In Mexico, the residual income was found to increase household savings (Rubalcava et al, 2009), as well as investment in productive activities and assets (Davis et al, 2004;Angelucci and de Giorgi, 2009;Todd et al, 2010). Indeed, the return on each peso invested was over 15 percent, which is substantially higher than the average annual real interest rate in the economy (Gertler et al, 2006).…”

The influence of the mother's power on her child's labor in Mexico

“…Rubalcava, Teruel, and Thomas (2004) show that the additional resources to the families from PROGRESA are spent on children's goods, better nutrition and investments in small livestock (traditionally managed by women in Mexico).…”

LATE with Mismeasured or Misspecified Treatment: An Application to Women's Empowerment in India

“…Numerous studies document that income or assets accruing to women or believed to be controlled by women are more likely than those of men to be allocated to expenditure that benefit children (e.g., education) as well as themselves, such as food and health care (e.g., Haddad et al (1997); Duflo (2003); Quisumbing and Maluccio (2003); Smith (2003); Rubalcava et al (2009); LaFave and Thomas (2017)). We rely on the collective households framework (Chiappori (1988(Chiappori ( , 1992) which uses household consumption data to structurally estimate a measure of women's empowerment.…”