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Is it money or brains? The determinants of intra-family decision power

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  • Graziella Bertocchi

    () (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, RECent, CEPR, CHILD and IZA)

  • Marianna Brunetti

    () (Faculty of Economics, University of Rome "Tor Vergata", CEFIN and CHILD)

  • Costanza Torricelli

    () (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia and CEFIN)

Abstract

We empirically study the determinants of intra-household decision power with respect to economic and financial choices using a suitable direct measure provided in the 1989-2010 Bank of Italy Survey of Household Income and Wealth. Focusing on a sample of couples, we evaluate the effect of each spouse's characteristics, household characteristics, and background variables. We find that the probability that the wife is in charge is affected by household characteristics such as family size and total income and wealth, but more importantly that it increases with the difference between hers and her husband's characteristics in terms of age, ducation, and income. The main conclusion is that decision-making power over family economics is not only determined by strictly economic differences, as suggested by previous studies, but also by differences in human capital and experience. Finally, exploiting the time dimension of our dataset, we show that this pattern is increasing over time.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Tor Vergata University, CEIS in its series CEIS Research Paper with number 238.

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Length: 36 pages
Date of creation: 15 Jun 2012
Date of revision: 15 Jun 2012
Handle: RePEc:rtv:ceisrp:238

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Postal: CEIS - Centre for Economic and International Studies - Faculty of Economics - University of Rome "Tor Vergata" - Via Columbia, 2 00133 Roma
Phone: +390672595601
Fax: +39062020687
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Web page: http://www.ceistorvergata.it
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Postal: CEIS - Centre for Economic and International Studies - Faculty of Economics - University of Rome "Tor Vergata" - Via Columbia, 2 00133 Roma
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Web: http://www.ceistorvergata.it

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Keywords: Family economics; intra-household decision power; gender differences;

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References

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Cited by:
  1. Graziella Bertocchi & Monica Bozzano, 2012. "Women, Medieval Commerce, and the Education Gender Gap," CHILD Working Papers Series 10, Centre for Household, Income, Labour and Demographic Economics (CHILD) - CCA.
  2. repec:mod:depeco:0007 is not listed on IDEAS

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