This paper deals with the measurement of per capita household consumption expenditures when the household's underlying demographic structure changes during the survey period. To do this, we provide a formal definition of precisely what it means to mis-measure the household's demographic structure. We then use assumptions on demographic processes within the household during the survey period to ...

A longstanding and yet unsettled question in labor economics is: does marriage cause men’s wages to rise? Cross-sectional wage studies consistently find that married men earn significantly higher wages than do men who are not currently married. However, it is well-known that inferring causal relationships from crosssectional analysis is inappropriate because of the biases introduced by unobserv...

Marriage, Partnership and Sexual Orientation: A Study of British University Academics and Administrators Using a unique data source on marital status, partnership and sexual orientation of academics and administrators at British universities, we estimate the impact of personal relationships upon earnings for men and women. While university data cover a relatively homogeneous group of workers, t...

This paper provides evidence of the long-term relationship between male-tofemale spousal violence and the Oportunidades conditional cash transfer program. It uses data from three nationally representative surveys that include detailed information on the prevalence of spousal abuse and threats of violence against women. Constructing comparable groups of beneficiary and nonbeneficiary households ...

Understanding Pareto Inefficient Intrahousehold Allocations Udry (1996) uses household survey data and finds that the allocation of resources within households is Pareto inefficient, contradicting the main assumption of most collective models of intrahousehold bargaining. He finds that among plots planted with the same crop in the same year, within a given household, those controlled by women p...

Altruism, Cooperation, and Efficiency: Agricultural Production in Polygynous Households Altruism among family members can, in some cases, inhibit cooperation by increasing the utility that players expect to receive in a non-cooperative equilibrium. To test this, we examine agricultural productivity in polygynous households in West Africa. We find that cooperation is greater – production is more...

We develop a model of partnership and marriage based upon individual abilities and match-specific returns. A theoretical result is that marriage and same-sex partnership positively select more able individuals, while the effect of unmarried heterosexual partnership is ambiguous. We conduct empirical analysis with a unique new data source on marital status, partnership and sexual orientation of ...

Although there are numerous studies of the dowry phenomenon in India, research pertaining to the custom in the rest of South Asia is sparse. The aim of this paper is to study dowry payments in Pakistan. Several interpretations for dowry are distinguished using a simple theoretical framework and the predictions of this model are tested using recent data from Pakistan. The investigation concludes...

How much income would a woman living alone require to attain the same standard of living that she would have if she were married? What percentage of a married couple’s expenditures are controlled by the husband? How much money does a couple save on consumption goods by living together versus living apart? We propose and estimate a collective model of household behavior that permits identificati...

There is some controversy in the field of household economics regarding the efficiency of household decisions. We make the point that a flexible specification of spousal preferences and the household production technology precludes the possibility of using revealed preference data on household time allocations to determine the manner in which spouses interact: efficiently or inefficiently. Unde...