IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp7281.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Intrahousehold Bargaining and the Demand for Consumer Durables in Brazil

Author

Listed:
  • Polato e Fava, Ana Claudia

    (CECS, Universidade Federal do ABC)

  • Arends-Kuenning, Mary P.

    (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

Abstract

In Brazil, wives do most of the household work. About sixty percent of them also work outside the household, working a total of about 10 hours more per week than men. Because of this unequal distribution of household work, husbands and wives might have different priorities regarding the purchase of durable goods. Although both husbands and wives enjoy entertainment durable goods, wives might have a relative preference for household-production durable goods such as washing machines over entertainment durable goods such as televisions. Using a Brazilian household consumption survey, we examine whether decisions about ownership of entertainment and production durable goods are the outcomes of a bargaining process between husbands and wives. We use several variables to measure bargaining power, including the ratio of women to men in a state. The results indicate that decisions about durable goods ownership are the outcomes of bargaining processes between husbands and wives with wives having a relative preference for household-production durable goods over entertainment durable goods compared to their husbands. Bargaining might explain why ownership of household production durable goods is relatively low in Brazil, despite their potential to save women's time.

Suggested Citation

  • Polato e Fava, Ana Claudia & Arends-Kuenning, Mary P., 2013. "Intrahousehold Bargaining and the Demand for Consumer Durables in Brazil," IZA Discussion Papers 7281, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp7281
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp7281.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Deaton, A. & Zaidi, S., 1999. "Guidelines for Constructing Consumption Aggregates for Welfare Analysis," Papers 192, Princeton, Woodrow Wilson School - Development Studies.
    2. Deaton,Angus & Muellbauer,John, 1980. "Economics and Consumer Behavior," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521296762.
    3. Tiago V. de V. Cavalcanti & José Tavares, 2008. "Assessing the "Engines of Liberation": Home Appliances and Female Labor Force Participation," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 90(1), pages 81-88, February.
    4. Manser, Marilyn & Brown, Murray, 1980. "Marriage and Household Decision-Making: A Bargaining Analysis," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 21(1), pages 31-44, February.
    5. Shelly J. Lundberg & Robert A. Pollak & Terence J. Wales, 1997. "Do Husbands and Wives Pool Their Resources? Evidence from the United Kingdom Child Benefit," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 32(3), pages 463-480.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bruce, Raphael & Lima, Rafael Costa, 2019. "Compulsory voting and TV news consumption," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 165-179.
    2. Sowmya Dhanaraj & Vidya Mahambare & Poonam Munjal, 2018. "From Income to Household Welfare: Lessons from Refrigerator Ownership in India," Journal of Quantitative Economics, Springer;The Indian Econometric Society (TIES), vol. 16(2), pages 573-588, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jeremy Lise & Shannon Seitz, 2011. "Consumption Inequality and Intra-household Allocations," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 78(1), pages 328-355.
    2. Marcos Rangel & Duncan Thomas, 2019. "Decision-Making in Complex Households," NBER Working Papers 26511, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Thomas, Duncan & Rangel, Marcos, 2020. "Decision-Making in Complex Households," CEPR Discussion Papers 14278, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Marcos A. Rangel & Duncan Thomas, 2019. "Decision-Making in Complex Households," Working Papers 2019-070, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group.
    5. Jara-Díaz, Sergio & Rosales-Salas, Jorge, 2017. "Beyond transport time: A review of time use modeling," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 209-230.
    6. Alberto Alesina & Andrea Ichino & Loukas Karabarbounis, 2011. "Gender-Based Taxation and the Division of Family Chores," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 3(2), pages 1-40, May.
    7. Sarah Xue Dong, 2021. "The effect of labour demand on women’s intra-household decision power: Evidence from Indonesia," Departmental Working Papers 2021-01, The Australian National University, Arndt-Corden Department of Economics.
    8. Jaime Andrés Sarmiento Espinel, 2012. "Parental investment in their children’s education," Serie documentos de trabajo del Centro de Estudios Económicos 2012-09, El Colegio de México, Centro de Estudios Económicos.
    9. Cygan-Rehm, Kamila & Kuehnle, Daniel & Riphahn, Regina T., 2018. "Paid parental leave and families’ living arrangements," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 182-197.
    10. Inés Berniell & Dolores de la Mata & Matilde Pinto Machado, 2020. "The Impact of a Permanent Income Shock on the Situation of Women in the Household: The Case of a Pension Reform in Argentina," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 68(4), pages 1295-1343.
    11. Laurens CHERCHYE & Thomas DEMUYNCK & Bram DE ROCK, 2010. "Noncooperative household consumption with caring," Working Papers of Department of Economics, Leuven ces10.34, KU Leuven, Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB), Department of Economics, Leuven.
    12. Agnes R. Quisumbing & John A. Maluccio, 2003. "Resources at Marriage and Intrahousehold Allocation: Evidence from Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Indonesia, and South Africa," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 65(3), pages 283-327, July.
    13. Quisumbing, Agnes R. & McClafferty, Bonnie, 2006. "Using gender research in development: food security in practice," Food security in practice technical guide series 2, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    14. Nicolas Jacquemet & Jean-Marc Robin, 2011. "Marriage with Labor Supply," Post-Print halshs-00639313, HAL.
    15. Caterina Adelaide Mauri & Alexander Wolf, 2016. "Household Decisions on Arts Consumption: How Men Can Avoid the Ballet," Working Papers ECARES ECARES 2016-36, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    16. Matthew J. Baker & Joyce P. Jacobsen, 2007. "Marriage, Specialization, and the Gender Division of Labor," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 25(4), pages 763-793.
    17. Gulati, Kajal & Ward, Patrick & Lybbert, Travis & Spielman, David, 2016. "Intrahousehold valuation, preference heterogeneity, and demand of an agricultural technology in Bihar, India," 2016 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Boston, Massachusetts 236280, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    18. Gillian Hamilton & Aloysius Siow, 2007. "Class, Gender and Marriage," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 10(4), pages 549-575, October.
    19. Akresh, Richard, 2005. "Understanding Pareto Inefficient Intrahousehold Allocations," IZA Discussion Papers 1858, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    20. Patricia Apps & Ray Rees, 2022. "Inequality measurement and tax/transfer policy," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 29(4), pages 953-984, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    consumer durables; Brazil; household production;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J12 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp7281. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.