In It to Win It ? Self-Esteem and Income-Earning among Couples

Ioana Alexandra Botea, Aletheia Donald and Léa Rouanet

No 9431, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: This paper investigates whether the relative self-esteem level of spouses can lead to within-household competition for inputs and affect economic gender inequality in the home. Using data on smallholder farmercouples in Cote d'Ivoire, the paper examines the relationship between spouses' self-esteem andincome-earning in agriculture. Although the link between own self-esteem and crop income earning is positive, there is a"battle of the sexes" in which one spouse's self-esteem is negatively related to the other's incomeearning, particularly income earning in higher-value, export-oriented agriculture. Women's outcomes are moresensitive to their own self-esteem (positively) and to their partners' (negatively) than men's. This negativerelationship is driven by individuals during middle age, when self-esteem is considered most stable. A key channelthrough which self-esteem appears to matter is by increasing control over household land, which is a scarce but crucialinput to agricultural production. In addition to confirming the importance of noncognitive skills for poverty reductionin rural settings, the findings highlight the importance of their impact on intra- and inter-household inequality,especially in the presence of interlocking market failures constraining the supply of inputs to production.

Keywords: Food Security; Agricultural Producer Organizations; Agricultural Industry; Agribusiness & Markets; Gender and Development; Climate Change and Agriculture; Crops and Crop Management Systems (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-10-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/29137160 ... ng-among-Couples.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: In it to win it? Self-esteem and income-earning among couples (2021)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:9431

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank 1818 H Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20433. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Roula I. Yazigi ().