IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/osf/osfxxx/vqzta_v1.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Bargaining between the sexes: outside options and leisure time in hunter-gatherer households

Author

Listed:
  • Deb, Angarika

    (Central European University)

  • Saunders, Daniel
  • Major-Smith, Daniel
  • Dyble, Mark
  • Page, Abigail Emma

    (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine)

  • Salali, Gul Deniz

    (UCL)

  • Migliano, Andrea
  • Heintz, Christophe

    (Central European University)

  • Chaudhary, Nikhil

Abstract

We discuss gendered division of labour in nuclear households as a bargaining problem, where male and female partners bargain over labour inputs and resulting leisure time. We hypothesize that outside options - an individual’s fallback options for welfare outside their household, such as kin support - affects this bargaining process, providing those with greater outside options more leverage to bargain for leisure time. In two hunter-gatherer populations, the BaYaka and Agta, we take social capital as the determinant of outside options, using a generative model of the Nash bargaining problem and Bayesian multilevel logistic regression to test our hypothesis. We find no evidence for an association between social capital and division of leisure in either population. Instead, we find remarkable equality in the division of leisure time within households. We suggest the potential role of sex-egalitarian norms, non-substitutability of subsistence labour, bilocality and behaviors which maintain gender equality in immediate-return hunter-gatherers.

Suggested Citation

  • Deb, Angarika & Saunders, Daniel & Major-Smith, Daniel & Dyble, Mark & Page, Abigail Emma & Salali, Gul Deniz & Migliano, Andrea & Heintz, Christophe & Chaudhary, Nikhil, 2024. "Bargaining between the sexes: outside options and leisure time in hunter-gatherer households," OSF Preprints vqzta_v1, Center for Open Science.
  • Handle: RePEc:osf:osfxxx:vqzta_v1
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/vqzta_v1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://osf.io/download/6617d046c053943effb4d261/
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.31219/osf.io/vqzta_v1?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Patil, Anand & Huard, David & Fonnesbeck, Christopher J., 2010. "PyMC: Bayesian Stochastic Modelling in Python," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 35(i04).
    2. Erev, Ido & Roth, Alvin E, 1998. "Predicting How People Play Games: Reinforcement Learning in Experimental Games with Unique, Mixed Strategy Equilibria," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(4), pages 848-881, September.
    3. Page, Abigail E. & Minter, Tessa & Viguier, Sylvain & Migliano, Andrea Bamberg, 2018. "Hunter-gatherer health and development policy: How the promotion of sedentism worsens the Agta's health outcomes," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 197(C), pages 39-48.
    4. Alberto Alesina & Paola Giuliano & Nathan Nunn, 2013. "On the Origins of Gender Roles: Women and the Plough," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 128(2), pages 469-530.
    5. Crawford, Vincent P, 1995. "Adaptive Dynamics in Coordination Games," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 63(1), pages 103-143, January.
    6. Klein, Matthew J. & Barham, Bradford L., 2018. "Point Estimates of Household Bargaining Power Using Outside Options," Staff Paper Series 590, University of Wisconsin, Agricultural and Applied Economics.
    7. Borgers, Tilman & Sarin, Rajiv, 1997. "Learning Through Reinforcement and Replicator Dynamics," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 1-14, November.
    8. Hoffman, Elizabeth & McCabe, Kevin A & Smith, Vernon L, 1996. "On Expectations and the Monetary Stakes in Ultimatum Games," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 25(3), pages 289-301.
    9. Hannah M. Lewis & Lucio Vinicius & Janis Strods & Ruth Mace & Andrea Bamberg Migliano, 2014. "High mobility explains demand sharing and enforced cooperation in egalitarian hunter-gatherers," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 5(1), pages 1-8, December.
    10. Pamela Schmitt, 2004. "On Perceptions of Fairness: The Role of Valuations, Outside Options, and Information in Ultimatum Bargaining Games," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 7(1), pages 49-73, February.
    11. Jessica K Knight & Gul Deniz Salali & Gaurav Sikka & Inez Derkx & Sarai M Keestra & Nikhil Chaudhary, 2021. "Quantifying patterns of alcohol consumption and its effects on health and wellbeing among BaYaka hunter-gatherers: A mixed-methods cross-sectional study," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(10), pages 1-18, October.
    12. Mark Dyble & Jack Thorley & Abigail E. Page & Daniel Smith & Andrea Bamberg Migliano, 2019. "Engagement in agricultural work is associated with reduced leisure time among Agta hunter-gatherers," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 3(8), pages 792-796, August.
    13. Mayumi Nakamura & Mito Akiyoshi, 2015. "What Determines the Perception of Fairness Regarding Household Division of Labor between Spouses?," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(7), pages 1-17, July.
    14. Coren L. Apicella & Frank W. Marlowe & James H. Fowler & Nicholas A. Christakis, 2012. "Social networks and cooperation in hunter-gatherers," Nature, Nature, vol. 481(7382), pages 497-501, January.
    15. Nabanita Datta Gupta & Leslie S Stratton, 2008. "Institutions, Social Norms, and Bargaining Power: An Analysis of Individual Leisure Time in Couple Households," Working Papers 0806, VCU School of Business, Department of Economics.
    16. Bina Agarwal, 1997. "''Bargaining'' and Gender Relations: Within and Beyond the Household," Feminist Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 3(1), pages 1-51.
    17. Xinxin Ma & Xiangdan Piao, 2019. "The Impact of Intra-household Bargaining Power on Happiness of Married Women: Evidence from Japan," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 20(6), pages 1775-1806, August.
    18. A. B. Migliano & A. E. Page & J. Gómez-Gardeñes & G. D. Salali & S. Viguier & M. Dyble & J. Thompson & Nikhill Chaudhary & D. Smith & J. Strods & R. Mace & M. G. Thomas & V. Latora & L. Vinicius, 2017. "Characterization of hunter-gatherer networks and implications for cumulative culture," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 1(2), pages 1-6, February.
    19. Binmore, Ken & Morgan, Peter & Snaked, Avner & Sutton, John, 1991. "Do people exploit their bargaining power? An experimental study," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 3(3), pages 295-322, August.
    20. Herbert Gintis, 2014. "The Bounds of Reason: Game Theory and the Unification of the Behavioral Sciences," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 10248.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Atanasios Mitropoulos, 2001. "Learning Under Little Information: An Experiment on Mutual Fate Control," Game Theory and Information 0110003, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Mitropoulos, Atanasios, 2001. "Learning under minimal information: An experiment on mutual fate control," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 523-557, August.
    3. Ianni, A., 2002. "Reinforcement learning and the power law of practice: some analytical results," Discussion Paper Series In Economics And Econometrics 203, Economics Division, School of Social Sciences, University of Southampton.
    4. DeJong, D.V. & Blume, A. & Neumann, G., 1998. "Learning in Sender-Receiver Games," Other publications TiSEM 4a8b4f46-f30b-4ad2-bb0c-1, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    5. Fernando Lozano & Jaime Lozano & Mario García, 2007. "An artificial economy based on reinforcement learning and agent based modeling," Documentos de Trabajo 3907, Universidad del Rosario.
    6. Jacob K. Goeree & Charles A. Holt, 2001. "Ten Little Treasures of Game Theory and Ten Intuitive Contradictions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1402-1422, December.
    7. Andreas Nicklisch, 2011. "Learning strategic environments: an experimental study of strategy formation and transfer," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 71(4), pages 539-558, October.
    8. Jean-François Laslier & Bernard Walliser, 2015. "Stubborn learning," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 79(1), pages 51-93, July.
    9. Yu Gong & Xiaojiang Xu & Changping Zhao & Tobias Schoenherr, 2024. "Multi-Tier Supply Chain Learning Networks: A Simulation Study Based on the Experience-Weighted Attraction (EWA) Model," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(10), pages 1-25, May.
    10. Peyton Young, H., 1998. "Individual learning and social rationality1," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 42(3-5), pages 651-663, May.
    11. Martino Banchio & Giacomo Mantegazza, 2022. "Artificial Intelligence and Spontaneous Collusion," Papers 2202.05946, arXiv.org, revised Sep 2023.
    12. Funai, Naoki, 2022. "Reinforcement learning with foregone payoff information in normal form games," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 200(C), pages 638-660.
    13. Siobhán M. Mattison & Neil G. MacLaren & Ruizhe Liu & Adam Z. Reynolds & Gabrielle D. Baca & Peter M. Mattison & Meng Zhang & Chun-Yi Sum & Mary K. Shenk & Tami Blumenfield & Christopher von Rueden & , 2021. "Gender Differences in Social Networks Based on Prevailing Kinship Norms in the Mosuo of China," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 10(7), pages 1-19, July.
    14. Güth, Werner & Kocher, Martin G., 2014. "More than thirty years of ultimatum bargaining experiments: Motives, variations, and a survey of the recent literature," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 396-409.
    15. Beggs, A.W., 2005. "On the convergence of reinforcement learning," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 122(1), pages 1-36, May.
    16. Kyle Hyndman & Antoine Terracol & Jonathan Vaksmann, 2009. "Learning and sophistication in coordination games," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 12(4), pages 450-472, December.
    17. Jiayang Li & Zhaoran Wang & Yu Marco Nie, 2023. "Wardrop Equilibrium Can Be Boundedly Rational: A New Behavioral Theory of Route Choice," Papers 2304.02500, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2024.
    18. Wolf Ze'ev Ehrblatt & Kyle Hyndman & Erkut Y. ÄOzbay & Andrew Schotter, 2006. "Convergence: An Experimental Study," Levine's Working Paper Archive 122247000000001148, David K. Levine.
    19. Ed Hopkins & Robert M. Seymour, 2002. "The Stability of Price Dispersion under Seller and Consumer Learning," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 43(4), pages 1157-1190, November.
    20. Jacques Durieu & Philippe Solal, 2012. "Models of Adaptive Learning in Game Theory," Chapters, in: Richard Arena & Agnès Festré & Nathalie Lazaric (ed.), Handbook of Knowledge and Economics, chapter 11, Edward Elgar Publishing.

    More about this item

    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:osf:osfxxx:vqzta_v1. 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: OSF (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://osf.io/preprints/ .

    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.