Another aspect that determines the outcome of children's health, education and other things is who makes the decision in the household (who decides what, and what's the relative 'voice' of each decision maker). Let's now narrow the decision makers to mother and father. We'll deal with another person (i.e. in-laws) later. Two extreme cases: 1) unitary model of household decision making, and 2) collective model.
In the first case, household acts as if there is only one decision maker. So, consumption/spending decisions are only affected by total household income. In the second case, imagine that the two parties (mom and dad) are 'bargaining' over what/how much to spend. The question is what determines each party's bargaining power?
The traditional approach on this is to assume that the bargaining power is determined by how much each party earns money. We can think of the other variants, such as relative 'assets ' (financial, social) brought when both got married, etc. We can think of an extreme situation in which only one party earns money, so he or she has all the voice over household decision. In this case, we are back to the first case.
Of course this is not the perfect approach. After all, we see a lot of cases where the wife does not earn antything but she takes full controls over everything. Welcome to the 'Dictated Husband Association' (Ikatan Suami Takut Istri, ISTI), guys!
Many studies found that when mother has greater say in household spending, it leads to better outcome of children's health. An example is a study by Duncan Thomas (1994), using log calorie intake, log protein intake, survival rate, weight for height and height for age. I can not recall which studies, but I also remembered similar results for mortality rate and low birth weight.
What about the decision made by other parties in the household? For now, I don't have any studies to quote. But we are having a real world experience with the issue...
i once came to a seminar about household decision making in lesbian households. result: it follows the general pattern to 'traditional' households, with many interesting details. i just think it's an interesting case to study.
ReplyDeletewhat? how come nobody told me about that seminar?
ReplyDeletelet's talk about popular marx/engels' idea suggesting that a marriage institution is a long-term professional relationship between a husband as the boss and a wife as the worker. and, one popular contradict proposition is feminism.
ReplyDeletemoney or power influences decisions and there is no ethical background regarding household decision. in some countries, there is a strong political background of social welfare which support a single mom to be independent from the father. it's called "a single mom benefit for living cost and renting cost."
Interesting blog you have here...
ReplyDeleteIn my family, Dad makes decisions, but he is usually heavily influenced by Mom. But there are cases when Dad just flat out make his own decisions.
I always love how economists simplify problems.
interesting article! I'd like to request an analysis of polygamy from economic perspective of population.
ReplyDelete