Lost in Interpretation : Why Spouses Disagree on Who Makes Decisions

Across a wide variety of regions and contexts, surveys have found high rates of disagreementwithin couples on matters of household decision making. Using a unique data set from a spousal survey of 421agricultural households in the Philippines, this paper finds that 50.2 percent of couples disagree about who makes anygiven decision in the household. The paper systematically explores the empirical relevance of theoretical explanationsfrom the existing literature for this spousal disagreement. Spouses are no more likely to agree on specific decisionscompared with general decision making, are more likely to agree on the decision-making process, and are less likely toagree on decision making for activities in which both take part. Moreover, women are more likely to report that theirhusbands were involved in decision making when speaking with a female enumerator. The findings suggest thatintrahousehold disagreement is not driven by differing interpretations of which decisions count as “major,” or byasymmetric information. Although the paper finds evidence of enumerator effects, their magnitude is small and cannotexplain the observed rates of spousal disagreement over decision making. Rather, spousal disagreement appears tostem primarily from systematic gender differences in interpreting what it means to be a decision maker. The paperdiscusses the implications of the findings for the measurement of intrahousehold decision making in household surveys.