Women's bargaining power and household budget allocation to human capital : Evidence from the Indonesia family life survey (IFLS)

Abstract

In this paper, we explore the association of women's bargaining power with human capital investment within the household. Using data from the Indonesia Family Life Survey (IFLS), wave 5, we estimate the determinants of bargaining power with multinomial logit models and the association of bargaining power with food, bad goods, education, and health spending with OLS regression models. We find that the wife's higher education level increases the probability of her sole bargaining power in food spending and of joint husband-wife decision-making in education and health spending. The share of food spending is largest in households with joint decision making, the share of spending on bad goods is largest in households where women have no bargaining power, while the association of bargaining power with education and child health spending is more heterogeneous and domain-specific.