Sex-Specific Lineage Networks and Resource Allocation: Effect of Kinship on Intrahousehold Gender Differences

Olumide O Taiwo, University of Colorado at Boulder

A large number of studies of household behavior in developing countries demonstrate that more resources are allocated to children when mothers have more bargaining power relative to fathers. The most widely held interpretation of this finding is that women care more about the well-being of children than men. In this paper, we demonstrate that these findings are consistent with household behavior in lineage systems where men care about an expanded set of children than women. Using a cooperative bargaining framework we derive testable implications and proceed to the test by taking advantage of differences in lineage systems in order to deal with unobserved heterogeneity. We could not reject an hypothesis of equal parental income effects when fathers do not have siblings and find evidence for lower effect of men's income in the household when there are possibilities of joint rearing of children.