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Widowhood and Consumption of Private Assignable Goods: The Role of Socio-Economic Status, Rainfall Shocks and Historical Institutions

Author

Listed:
  • Bandyopadhyay, Sutirtha
  • Maity, Bipasha
Abstract
We study how weather shocks interact with cultural norms biased against women to affect female poverty within the household. Using expenditure on female assignable clothing per adult woman as a measure of women's intra-household access to consumption, we document that spending on female assignable goods is lower in households with at least one widowed woman relative to households with no widows in India. However, selection into widowhood appears to be plausibly random and economic hardship on account of death of a male member is unlikely to explain why households with a widow have lower spending on female assignable goods. We then study how rainfall shocks in uence the spending on female assignable goods by the presence of a widow in the household. We find that although beneficial rainfall shocks increase overall spending on female assignable goods; this increase is lower in households with a widow. We obtain opposite findings for spending on male assignable goods. We find that regions where widow persecution was widespread historically are associated with poorer outcomes for widows at present. Our analysis shows that persistence in historical norms can potentially prevent women from realizing gains in access to consumption resources within the household even in the event of beneficial environmental shocks.

Suggested Citation

  • Bandyopadhyay, Sutirtha & Maity, Bipasha, 2022. "Widowhood and Consumption of Private Assignable Goods: The Role of Socio-Economic Status, Rainfall Shocks and Historical Institutions," GLO Discussion Paper Series 1021, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:glodps:1021
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    widows; rainfall shocks; private assignable goods; historical persistence; India;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D13 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Production and Intrahouse Allocation
    • I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General Welfare, Well-Being
    • J12 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • N35 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - Asia including Middle East
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming
    • Z10 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - General

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