Data and Code for: On Her Own Account: How Strengthening Women's Financial Control Impacts Labor Supply and Gender Norms

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Erica Field, Duke University; Pande Rohini, Yale University; Natalia Rigol, Harvard University; Simone Schaner, University of Southern California; Charity Troyer Moore, Yale University

Version: View help for Version V1

Name	File Type	Size	Last Modified
Replication Materials			03/24/2021 01:02:PM

Project Citation:

Field, Erica, Rohini, Pande, Rigol, Natalia, Schaner, Simone, and Troyer Moore, Charity. Data and Code for: On Her Own Account: How Strengthening Women’s Financial Control Impacts Labor Supply and Gender Norms. Nashville, TN: American Economic Association [publisher], 2021. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2021-07-08. https://doi.org/10.3886/E132501V1

Project Description

Summary: Can increasing control over earnings incentivize a woman to work, and thereby influence norms around gender roles? We randomly varied whether rural Indian women received bank accounts, training in account use, and direct deposit of public sector wages into their own (versus husbands') accounts. Relative to the accounts only group, women who also received direct deposit and training worked more in public and private sector jobs. The private sector result suggests gender norms initially constrained female employment. Three years later, direct deposit and training broadly liberalized women's own work-related norms, and shifted perceptions of community norms.

Funding Sources: IZA Growth and Labour Markets in Low Income Countries Programme; Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; DFID; Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies; J-PAL Governance Initiative; Innovations for Poverty Action Financial Services for the Poor Initiative

Scope of Project

Subject Terms: female labor supply; gender norms; household bargaining; finanical control

JEL Classification:
      D13 Household Production and Intrahousehold Allocation
      D83 Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
      J16 Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
      J22 Time Allocation and Labor Supply
      O15 Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration

Geographic Coverage: India

Time Period(s): 11/2012 – 4/2018

Collection Date(s): 11/2013 – 4/2018

Universe: Married couples in which at least one household member reported having ever worked for MGNREGS and the wife lacked an individual bank account during baseline screening (Nov 2013-Jan 2014).

These couples lived in 197 village clusters in our study districts of Gwalior, Morena, Sheopur, and Shivpuri, Madhya Pradesh, India. Village clusters were selected because they had a banking kiosk operated by one of our two banking partners for the study.

Data Type(s): administrative records data; survey data

Collection Notes: None

Methodology

Response Rate: 84-93%

Sampling: Married couples who appeared in MGNREGS administrative records in target communities who (a) reported at least one member had worked for MGNREGS and where (b) the woman was unbanked

Data Source: Original survey data

Collection Mode(s): computer-assisted personal interview (CAPI); face-to-face interview; web scraping

Scales: N/A

Weights: None

Unit(s) of Observation: individuals

Geographic Unit: village cluster (gram panchayat)

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Published Versions

V1 [2021-07-08]

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