Measuring and Changing Control: Women's Empowerment and Targeted Transfers
54 Pages Posted: 16 Nov 2015
There are 3 versions of this paper
Measuring and Changing Control: Women's Empowerment and Targeted Transfers
Measuring and Changing Control: Women's Empowerment and Targeted Transfers
Measuring and Changing Control: Women's Empowerment and Targeted Transfers
Date Written: November 2015
Abstract
This paper studies how targeted cash transfers to women affect their empowerment. We use a novel identification strategy to measure women's willingness to pay to receive cash transfers instead of their partner receiving it. We apply this among women living in poor households in urban Macedonia. We match experimental data with a unique policy intervention (CCT) in Macedonia offering poor households cash transfers conditional on having their children attending secondary school. The program randomized whether the transfer was offered to household heads or mothers at municipality level, providing us with an exogenous source of variation in (offered) transfers. We show that women who were offered the transfer reveal a lower willingness to pay, and we show that this is in line with theoretical predictions.
Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation