Is couple’s joint decision making associated with favorable household consumption patterns for children? Evidence from Cebu, Philippines

Using a cross-sectional dataset from a set of communities in Cebu province, Philippines, this paper seeks to characterize the relationship between a couple’s decision-making arrangement and their household’s consumption pattern. I construct indices of the mother’s and the father’s prevalence in decision making based on the proportion of important decision-making situations wherein the mother and the father each became solely decisive, while allowing for a distinct third category of joint decision making, a proxy for cooperative spousal behavior. After controlling for total household resources and several factors that influence each spouse’s bargaining power, the estimates I obtain from a system of demand functions for household consumption goods suggest that, relative to sole decision making by either parent, joint decision making is related to favorable spending patterns for children (higher budget shares on milk, schooling, medicine, and clothing and lower budget shares on beverages and alcohol). In addition, the mother and the father do not seem to exhibit conflicting preferences across a range of household consumption goods, so that it is likely that joint decision making allows couples to coordinate their resource allocation decisions and mitigate the underprovision of household public goods. JEL classification: D13, D12, D70, J12, J13