Soil Endowments and Intrahousehold Distribution of Consumption in India: A Structural Approach

Using a collective household model and a recent structural estimation methodology, we estimate how intrahousehold resource shares of individual members vary in India by exogenously varying soil texture. In general, we find that relative to men, women and children have substantially lower access to consumption resources within Indian households. However, the gender gap in resource shares and consequently relative female poverty is found to be substantially lower in households in clayey relative to loamy soil regions. Children’s resource shares are also modestly higher in clayey soil regions, but significant differences in child poverty are not found across soil textures. Because clayey soil has been associated with higher relative female employment and overall gender norms favorable to women, our findings suggest that soil texture also plays an important role in facilitating improvement of relative female bargaining power within households.