Effects of Female-Targeted Cash Transfers on Experimental Measures of Agency in Household Decision-Making

We detail the design of lab-in-the-field experiments that have been carried out on married couples in two rural locations of northern Nigeria. We measure women’s (as well as men’s) agency in household decision-making in different decision domains which include the choice of gender-specific privately consumed goods and household public goods as well as money allocation decisions between self and spouse. We also consider the choice of food and drinks for immediate consumption within the experimental session. Our main experimental measure of agency is the propensity to not defer decision-making to one’s spouse (in the absence of any communication). We also investigate other potential measures of agency: propensity to make a suggestion to one’s spouse that is closer to own preferences, the likelihood to not revise earlier stated allocation decision after receiving communication from spouses, etc. By varying whether participants’ decisions (such as those mentioned above) can be observed by their spouses, we measure whether there is a demand for agency in the absence of spousal observation versus an ability to actually exercise one’s agency in household decision-making when decisions are observed by one’s spouse. Combined with data from a 15-month-long unconditional cash transfer (UCT) program which was targeted at women and carried out as a Randomized Control Trial, these lab experiments in the field, additionally, can provide evidence on the potential impact of receiving an UCT on women’s agency in household decision-making, one year after the UCT program ended. We hypothesize that UCT-receiving women will exhibit higher agency according to these experimental measures than non-recipients. Some likely channels include greater experience dealing with cash as well as higher involvement with income generating activities.