The one aspect of this article that really stuck out in my mind was the compelling evidence suggesting that despite the implementation of these transfer programs to female's in the household, the average family consumption of food did not increase by any statistically significant measure. In the by-laws of the program, the RPS transfers aimed at increasing children's consumption of food as well as educational enrollment and health care access. But looking at the coefficients and statistical measures in table 2 of the article, evidence suggests that these programs still fail to adequately provide children in low-income areas with additional nutrients and food consumption.
While the article does point out that milk consumption offers a better understanding of household's expenditure on children's food consumption, I still believe that this measure fails to encapsulate overall food consumption. Milk may provide nutrition, but it only offers part of a healthy and balanced diet that growing children need. Why did the experiment not test to see if other valuable nutrient groups also received additional expenditure during the course of the experiment.
In order to correct the inability of the RPS programs to ensure extra household expenditure on food for children, the experiment should have tried alternative methods. An easy alternative would consist of utilizing food stamps as part of the income transfer to mothers. By partitioning an established portion of weekly or monthly transfers specifically for food stamps it could better guarantee that the funds were going specifically towards extra food for the household, not other things such as entertainment, etc.
Gitter and Barham’s in-depth analysis of the relationship between women’s education and household decision-making power, and their ability to use conditional cash transfers to send their children to school, buy more nutritious foods, and milk, combined heavy theoretical framework with extensive empirical evidence. Using the nonunitary theory of household preferences, the authors posited that given conditional transfers so that they could express their preferences fully, women would invest in education and health outcomes, more than their male counterparts would. However, the data show that the mother’s level of education is nonmonotonically related to her daughter’s education: if the mother gains too much power over the household (as measured in part by the ratio of mother’s education to father’s education), the enrollment of girl children falls, while boy children’s attendance always increases. Gitter and Barham call on Basu’s past research that posits that while child labor will bring increasing returns to the powerful mother, while the benefits of schooling probably stay the same. The propensity to withdraw girls from school before boys therefore suggests that the mother gets some added benefit from the labor of girls over the labor of boys, which may reflect cultural norms and gender inequities. I was a little confused about the measure of household power. By taking the ratio of women’s education to men’s education, the authors posited that the more education the woman has in relation to the man, the more power she will have. But, if the cultural norms the authors discuss entail any gender inequity, I don’t know what, if any, real power would result from a woman’s premium of a few years of education, if that. The authors explicitly state that equal power does not necessarily follow from education equity, so why would increased power result from more relative education? In the broad scope of the paper, this probably isn’t that big of an issue, since a lack of female power in households did not decrease schooling expenditures. However, I found it interesting that “excessive” female power in the household may actually have a negative effect on children’s schooling, although it could be that there were simply no measurable marginal effects. I think that this finding lends itself to the question, Is the merely gender that facilitates increased education expenditures, or is it a combination of gender and a new fiscal enfranchisement of previously marginalized women that leads to increased schooling for their children?
The article was interesting because the study reasonably concluded that women would invest more money on their children's education and nutrition if they are receiving the cash transfers compared to men...what baffled me was how the amount of power a woman gains affects the amount she invests in her children's future. If there is a stark difference in power between the man and the woman, with the woman having much dominance and freedom in the family, why does this negatively impact the children?
The impact on children also depends on the gender of the children. If the mother's power increases, boys will always benefit because they will continue to receive education; however, the situation with girls is opposite. Daughters' education will decrease depending on how much power the mother gains. As difficult as it is to measure power, there should be some research on the extent of financial security the mother has in the family through incomes and cash transfers. This study could potentially determine how much money should be allocated that will prevent the impact of cash transfers to adversely affect the children's future.
The authors of this article found that consumption of food did increase with an increase in household consumption. In fact, it was found that the variable Treat, representing the nonincome effects, shows a significant positive effect on food and milk expenditures. The estimated (nonincome) effect of RPS on milk expenditures per capita was $C72 which is more than twice the average baseline consumption. As for food expenditures, the average nonincome effect of RPS was found to be $C445 or a 15% increase from average baseline consumption.
The nonincome effects of RPS also resulted in greater spending on education, which can be expected given the conditionality factor. However, the nonincome effect increase in food and milk expenditures indicate that other nonincome effects are at work. RPS held seminars on nutrition for households, and perhaps attendance at these boosted spending on food and milk. Since data on individual food consumption was not available, milk is simply a proxy for the increase in child food consumption as opposed to total household consumption rates.
The econometric experiment in this article highlighted some very important points from previous papers, and came up with conclusions of its own. The experiment did produce several valuable conclusions, but was a little wordy at times. The authors too often referenced data that was not statistically significant. I feel doing that draws attention away from their core results that exhibited strong statistical significance. It makes the paper feel less sure of itself, and does not hammer home the one or two very important points to be gained from it. They published their full results and they may just simply have too many variables. One example of a nonsignificant correlation they had to mention was the impact of an additional year of education between males and females. I think it is unfair for them to hint at a correlation when the statistics say there is not.
Another flaw the authors may have with their experiment is that some of the Progesa efforts (although very important to the people everyone is ultimately trying to help) could cause bias in the models. They say themselves that women received lectures "as part of Progesa that encourage proper nutrition through expenditures on fruit, vegetables, and milk. These lectures are highly beneficial to the well being of women and their households. But if you are trying to conduct a raw experiment with clear control and treatment groups this may not be the best way. It would be interesting to see how results would differ if we conducted the same experiment with women who did not receive this nutrition education.
Both Professor Casey and the text have touched upon the important role women play in the developing process due to the high frequency of female-headed households, traditionally lower earning capacity of women and limited influence over spouse’s income. In addition, females in developing countries often have limited access to education, social security, government employment programs and formal sector employment, thus exacerbating their economic situation.
Gitter and Barham’s empirical analysis points to a positive relationship between female power and school enrollment, but households with tremendously powerful women may see a decline in spending on education. Thus, programs such as the RPS program are helpful in increasing educational enrollment, improving the standard of living for the poor. It would be interesting to see further research on the conditionality of the program. What would the school enrollment results look like if the payments were not conditional? Would there be a correlation in parents’ literacy levels and children’s enrollment in school? In addition, what would the data look like for households run by single mothers? For the families participating in the RPS program, what did their expenditures look like after the program’s completion? Did they see their children’s education as more of a priority?
This article points out a lot of interesting aspects of the family structure in less fortunate families. For instance, the evidence makes a clear argument that female heads of household will be more conscious of the needs of the children when deciding where to allocate resources than male heads. However, it also seems to imply that having the male head of household have power is very beneficial as well as more of an example to follow. The article claims that a successful male head of household is very beneficial for success for young boys, while for young girls it is helpful to see a successful female head of household. Furthermore, males are more likely to see higher returns for each year of education than females are. Of course, this is not necessarily a just system, but it is a prominent aspect of our labor market today. Therefore I think it is safe to conclude that the most beneficial arrangement for children would be an equal partnership between both the male and the female head of household in financial aspects as well as all other aspects of running the household. This would provide children with both the essentials that they need and the examples that would best benefit them later on in life.
While the literature does not reveal whether it is more effective to give the transfer payments to men or women, this fact seems secondary to me. What seemed most important was the fact that this incentive based program to raise human capital, and eventually output, was effective on many levels and if output increases, the poverty level will decrease. By essentially subsidizing the opportunity cost of children working by putting children through school, the parents do not need to worry about this tradeoff. Furthermore, the children are increasing their levels of human capital by both increasing levels of schooling and visiting doctors regularly, increasing their long run productivity and increasing output as well. If the money the parents receive gets spent on food, that further increases children's health, as well as their own health, making them more productive and immediately helping decrease the poverty level. Other programs should use this as an example of a successful use of an incentive based program aimed at increasing human capital.
I really enjoyed reading this article. I thought their argument was well thought out and their initial objective was very interesting. Personally, I thought the influence of mothers would have been higher. Households with more powerful women have enrollment rates of 82%, while households with less powerful women had 78%. I think it would be interesting to see what the rates would be in a more family oriented home. (It is true that I do not know how well these family function and I actually think that topic is missing from this paper) How do these family work internally? I feel that the paper bounces from having the father posses the power to having the mother, while there may not be anything wrong with having one parent control everything, I find myself wondering what the figures for a would be for a family with the mother and father making decisions together. Also, the fact that maternal power is monotonic, but diminishing tells me that maybe more paternal influence would solve that problem of diminishing returns.
I too enjoyed the article. I would like to see more data or a further evaluation with regard to page 275 and the admission that culturally it is sometimes that a more powerful woman still doesn't mean equality with the husband. The article brings up some very interesting data about how effective a "more powerful" woman is in the household. However, it led me to think further. This experiment was only conducted in households with two parents in order to observer the family economic dynamic and chart the effectiveness of a woman gaining more decision-making power within the home. I would like to see more data concerning single mothers and/or widows with children, who in their home have all the “power.” I argue that if a conditional cash transfer were given to a single mother, that the data concerning her economic decisions would be a better control, as she is not hindered in any way by a husband or by cultural norms. Either way, I found the article as well as the data to be informative and useful.
The information that I found most interesting in this paper was the profound effects that nonincome education programs have on food expenditures. In a study done by Hoddinott and Skoufias (2004), they found that the nonincome effects of the Progresa program account for half of the total increases in expenditures on food, fruit, vegetables and animal products. In the Gitter and Barham study, the nonincome impacts of RPS had substantial positive impacts on milk and food expenditures. The substantial impacts of the nonincome aspects of these two programs show the importance of not only increasing the financial capabilities of the poor but also increasing their knowledge on how to maximize the benefits of an increase in income. With an increase in knowledge about nutrition, the poor are able to increase their overall health and welfare more so than they would with only an increase in income. I would be very interested to see a study done focused on measuring the multiplier effect of implementing a program that has both income and nonincome aspects versus a program that only provides an increase in income or a program that only provides an increase in education.
While the article brought up many interesting factors that affect household consumption and investment choices related to children's education and their health, I was surprised the authors did not consider the cultural norms of Nicaragua to a greater extent. There was a lot of data supporting relationships between each parent and children, but there was no mention of the effect of an extended family or the number of children in the family on the consumption and investment choices of the household. The data make perfect sense to me when applied to a nuclear family, focusing strictly on a mother, father, and children, but studying extended families may have different results. It is important to consider how women are perceived in any society and the family dynamics given the cultural norms, regardless of how many years of education they have, in order to see how effective conditional cash transfer programs such as RPS and Progresa will be. Furthermore, given a conditional cash transfer program, I think it is especially important to educate women on how to best use there stipends. While the two programs discussed in this article "have been shown to be effective at increasing school enrollment rates and encouraging spending on food" (275), governments must consider the kind of food the household is now consuming. I think the same argument could apply to a safety net like food stamps in the U.S. While it is important that women have resources to influence household consumption and investment choices, their decisions should be educated ones, which promote healthy lifestyles.
G&B point out that payments going towards mothers of families are more likely to be spent on improving child welfare than that of the father. Looking at RPS and its effect on education, they look into income, conditionality, and intrahousehold impacts. I found it interesting that the RPS program looked at empowering women as a very important aspect of contributing to the child's welfare. This power is correlated to spending on children and enrollment, therefore resulting in the child's better well-being.
I found it important to note that the sex of the child resulted in the type of welfare received. For example, sons receiving better education while daughters receive better health. This reminded me of a female Indian friend of mine who's parents payed for her brothers's education but not hers because of her sex.
Another observation I found intriguing was that while increased parent education promoted increased children attendance in school (and thus a decrease in the transfer required by RPS), at a certain point (too high of an education), there is diminishing returns. The same goes with too much power.
Finally, I found it noteworthy that non-income effects appear to be more important in the studies.
The study proposed in the article drew many conclusions that were valid and backed by strong statistical evidence. Like Katie said, there should be a strong emphasis on women and their impact on the economy based on their views and their maternal nature. Through previous studies and research, the article looked at many different scenarios of allocating subsidies to intrahousehold families to decide which actions would provide the greatest utility and economic impact. Based on this evidence, the decision to allocate the money to women should increase total economic benefit to their families in the long run. The study focuses on normative economics as they consider the cause-and-effect of introducing the RPS program.
What I was confused about throughout the article was the importance of education and enrollment in the school systems as such a key factor in development. The last article we read described the school system in many low-income countries as inadequate and sometimes moving backwards in education. Is this the same case for the private schools and would the women ultimately spend more of the cash funds to send their children to the private schools? The women with greater power might but they might also want to distribute the funds more efficiently and get the greatest benefit out of the money which might not consist of getting the best education possible, just an education in general.
It would also be interesting to have done a smaller experiment of giving men the money and seeing the full effect of their decisions of allocating the funds. The actions may be entirely different from the women but they may have different ideas about how to provide for the family that may still be very beneficial. I did find the part about women gaining too much power and how it affects their decision to be another surprising discovery. How does the program decide how much to give and to whom so that women do not exceed their power?
I totally support the article's goal of advocating for the increased power of women, and thereby improving the welfare of their children, and I by no means mean to take away from that goal. However, I think this article begs the reader to ask whether or not something can be done to make men more likely to spend extra money on their children's education or nutrition? Is there a way to alter their behavior so that they spend more on improving the family's overall health- to activate a paternal instinct? Certainly the measures a mother can take are beneficial for the children, but it seems that they would be amplified if both parents were more apt to spend on improving the family's well-being.
While reading this article, what stuck out most to me was the fact that if a woman has enough power in the household, her children's school enrollment may actually start to go down. They cite a study done by Basu, and supported by other researchers in later studies, that the benefits of her children going to school will start to flatten out, while the benefits from child labor will actually increase. Thus, there reaches a point where the marginal benefit of having her children perform labor is higher than having them attend school. The findings in this article supported Basu's early hypothesis. This is a perplexing issue to me. We see women as suffering most, but if they gain too much power, then the benefits of programs like RPS for their children start to dwindle. Perhaps then we need not always focus on monetary distribution, but delve deeper into the lives of the poor and figure out what sociological changes can be made to encourage children to stay in school, no matter how powerful their parent is. Unfortunately, it seems like a never-ending loop because school enrollment drops because labor is marginally more beneficial, and labor wouldn't be as beneficial if living conditions were better. Ultimately, it all comes down to how do we improve the economic and social lives in developing countries.
I think it's interesting that Progresa incorporates lectures in their program to educate women about proper nutrition and influence their preferences. Based on the data presented by Gitter and Barham,I'm wondering if these lectures should not only be provided in other programs like RPS for women, but also in programs for men. Maybe men would have a higher propensity to spend on household shared goods if they participated in programs aimed at influencing their spending patterns in order to benefit their children. The lectures could even go beyond food and nutrition to emphasize the importance of school enrollment. Lectures of that nature could also help bring about change in the nonmonotonic relationship displayed between the power of women and the enrollment of girls in school.
Part I of II I found Gitter and Barham’s article to be a very informative and interesting piece—although non-paradigm shifting—and a bit heavy on the technical details of running regression analyses. That being said, the non-technical portions of the paper were, for the most part, very intelligible, even to me as a non-Economics major. I was most perplexed by one issue of the author’s findings. Namely, I could not understand why, even after reading the author’s explanations, “when the woman’s power greatly exceeds her husband’s, additional female power reduces school enrollment” or why “[in] household with extremely powerful women, more female power may begin to reduce schooling or at least have no additional marginal impact.” (271, 287). On page 285, the authors seem to suggest (in my understanding at least), that while educating fathers may have a somewhat positive impact on their children, educating women will produce greater gains in children’s education. These two conclusions taken together would suggest (again, in my opinion) that more education is needed for both parents, since solely empowering women to a very high level seems to hurt educational attainments. Perhaps a social program could be tailored to teach women twice a week and men once a week, that way both parents advance their education (leading to greater gains for children) while women are given that extra boost to keep the program in line with the study’s conclusion about the relationship between a mother’s education and that her children. The conditionality component of the program also resonated with me, mainly because we consider the use of conditionality while evaluating microfinance institutions (MFIs) in GDI. The Development Team—of which I am a member—is tasked with evaluating the social and economic impact of MFIs before we considering lending to them. When MFIs, for example, establish that potential customers must attend lessons (to my understanding, arrangements should be made so that customers do not have to skip work or engage in some other form of economically-deleterious activity in order to attend) on nutrition classes or attend doctor’s appointments (both services are provided by the MFIs at no cost as I understood) as a condition for obtaining a loan, that signifies to us as evaluators that MFIs are concerned with treating many aspects of poverty, not just those revolving around income. Since poverty alleviation is ostensible one of the goals of GDI, we look more favorably upon MFIs that attack to tackle poverty on multiple levels.
Part I of II I found Gitter and Barham’s article to be a very informative and interesting piece—although non-paradigm shifting—and a bit heavy on the technical details of running regression analyses. That being said, the non-technical portions of the paper were, for the most part, very intelligible, even to me as a non-Economics major. I was most perplexed by one issue of the author’s findings. Namely, I could not understand why, even after reading the author’s explanations, “when the woman’s power greatly exceeds her husband’s, additional female power reduces school enrollment” or why “[in] household with extremely powerful women, more female power may begin to reduce schooling or at least have no additional marginal impact.” (271, 287). On page 285, the authors seem to suggest (in my understanding at least), that while educating fathers may have a somewhat positive impact on their children, educating women will produce greater gains in children’s education. These two conclusions taken together would suggest (again, in my opinion) that more education is needed for both parents, since solely empowering women to a very high level seems to hurt educational attainments. Perhaps a social program could be tailored to teach women twice a week and men once a week, that way both parents advance their education (leading to greater gains for children) while women are given that extra boost to keep the program in line with the study’s conclusion about the relationship between a mother’s education and that her children. The conditionality component of the program also resonated with me, mainly because we consider the use of conditionality while evaluating microfinance institutions (MFIs) in GDI. The Development Team—of which I am a member—is tasked with evaluating the social and economic impact of MFIs before we considering lending to them. When MFIs, for example, establish that potential customers must attend lessons (to my understanding, arrangements should be made so that customers do not have to skip work or engage in some other form of economically-deleterious activity in order to attend) on nutrition classes or attend doctor’s appointments (both services are provided by the MFIs at no cost as I understood) as a condition for obtaining a loan, that signifies to us as evaluators that MFIs are concerned with treating many aspects of poverty, not just those revolving around income. Since poverty alleviation is ostensible one of the goals of GDI, we look more favorably upon MFIs that attack to tackle poverty on multiple levels.
I generally like the article but in a lot of ways it leaves me wanting more. For one thing I would have liked to see more emphasis on social influences on women’s power in the household and whether the results of the study prove true in much more male dominated societies. I found it odd that the researchers found little evidence of men seizing the cash transfers from their spouses. It makes me wonder whether these results would be found in places like the Middle East where it is often unacceptable for women to act as the head of the household if not because of lack of income, education, etc. then because of external pressures from a male dominated society.
I also think it would be beneficial to look at what happens if the same cash transfer programs were set up for men. Because the study has more variables than just giving money to women vs. men it is hard to definitively attribute the results to simple gender differences. The study also provided nutritional classes and set up required schooling, etc in order to receive the cash transfers. If men were given these same classes and conditions then given the cash transfers it is possible the same results would be achieved regardless of gender.
One last thing I would like to know more about is the idea that giving a woman a lot of power could have little impact on the rate of children's education or even lessen it. This seems to hint that creating a female dominated household is as bad or worse than a male dominated one. It also could mean that a balanced household provides the best results for improving living conditions and increasing human capital.
In the end I think that giving women more power in the household would certainly have a positive impact but I don't think that this article contributed to that belief. While combined with other research this article could be of use on its own I am at a loss as to what conclusion to draw from it.
While I thought this article was interesting and clearly presented information that shows women have a greater influence on whether their children receive an education when their income increases, I think it would go a long way to understand what type of skills the children are receiving when they are in school. The quality of the education must be worthwhile for them to be enrolled. Otherwise, it might be more beneficial for them to gain skills by working in a family business, as suggested when women have a dominant position in the household and utilize their children as a source of labor. That being said, would the child's human capital be enhanced by working in such conditions? Certainly, experience is important, but education is equally important. I think it would be interesting to see what types of skills are being taught in order to advance these impoverished children compared to work experience.
I find it rather interesting that (page 5) Basu has suggested (and backed up) the claim that an increase in Women's power while at below or around the same level as the man's bargaining power there is a positive relationship between women's bargaining power and the children's schooling, but when it greatly exceeds it has a negative effect. The idea of having hyperbola shaped relation is a rather interesting one indeed. What is even more interesting is that the conclusion of this study was that the relationship between the Woman's bargaining power and male enrollment rates were always positive and that only when compared with girl's attendance rates did they posses this nonlinear relationship. It makes me wonder if the boy's relationship is also nonlinear but was not elastic enough near the higher levels of woman's bargaining power to register a need for a nonlinear formula? Another thing to think about is whether these results would remain robust if we repeated this study across more countries and continents, helping the study control for other exogenous variables, such as culture.
Many of you have already questioned the conclusion that after women acheive a certain amount of power they remove their daughters from school, but allow their sons to continue. Emily was surprised that the authors did not go into much detail regarding the Nicaraguan culture, and how that might explain some of these seemingly unusual empirical conclusions. I believe that had they looked farther into the Nicaraguan culture, especially relating to gender inequalities they would find an explanation.
In my experience with India's rural poverty and the role of women in those societies, I believe that as women gain more power and education they realize that while education is beneficial, financial security allows for freedom. At least in poor rural India the role of the daughter is to work to benefit the household either in the field, doing chores, etc. Ultimately the daughters are married off, a dowry is made, an alliance made, and hopefully guaranteed safety and support for the girl. Unfortunatley, most of these marriages are not desired by the daughter, and while math and science are great, the best way to avoid getting married off is to be financially independent. As long as women are financially dependent on men, in particular their fathers they have little to no control over their fates. India has laws preventing girls from being married off under the age of 18 (they can marry at 16 with parental consent), but the enforcement of these laws, particularly in poor rural areas are rare. Especially, if those pursuing justice are financially compromised 13 year olds.
Considering that type of environment, I understand why a mother would pull her daughter out of school in order to ensure there are enough resources to keep her healthy (the authors did not specify who got the increased nutritional resources, they identified children but perhaps there were discrepancies based on gender), keep her safe, and if possible give her some form of finanical independence.
Now, I will probably find out that Nicaraguan culture is nothing like the scenario I just laid out, but there could still be explanations that would justify a mother's actions to pull her daughter out of school depending on the cultural norms and expectations and roles of women.
Gitter and Barham’s article “Women’s Power, Conditional Cash Transfers, and Schooling in Nicaragua” describes and examines Nicaragua’s Social Safety Net program, Red de Proteccion Social (RPS) and builds upon a foundation of relevant literature. By targeting women in making the cash transfers, school enrollment increased as did food and milk expenditures, raising overall welfare of the RPS households. The authors spend a significant portion of the article focusing on and measuring the power dynamic within households with regard to males and females and fund allocation, including the somewhat peculiar phenomenon of nonmonotonic relation for girls’ education based upon their mothers’ education level.
The power of RPS to educate and improve lives is evident in the construction of the conditional cash transfer program where stipends are received in exchange for children’s school attendance and visits to health clinics. Such a program creates positive incentives and opens opportunities for further benefit. A similar social safety net organization, Progresa, based in Mexico, encouraged proper nutrition through classes offered to the program’s participants. It explained the nutritional benefits of milk and fruit and vegetables, and as a result, those household’s expenditures on milk, fruit, and vegetables increased. This instruction about nutrition was educational and offered a suggestion of how households could spend their extra income in a way that would have positive ramifications. The success of Progresa’s nutrition lectures advocates the addition of other such programs that could improve the well being of those receiving the conditional cash transfers. Health and safety seminars, education courses aimed at promoting literacy, and microfinance opportunities with accompanying business skill classes, could be implemented with exponentially beneficial results in low-income households and communities.
I was glad to see the findings in the article found a positive correlation between money transfers to women of the household and the effects it had on their children’s enrollment in school and total food consumption within the household. I also think that for an initial investment of $224, the positive effects are impressive; with an estimated RPS impact of $517 on food and milk expenditures. Also, despite the fact that women sometimes played very weak roles in the home, it was good to see that the money that was distributed for RPS purposes was not withdrawn by the men for uses outside of education or food.
I was also intrigued by the finding that increasing the mother's education level always has a positive impact on the boys' education outcomes. Though it isn’t specified in the study, I am curious to see how much time mothers with little formal schooling spent at home in comparison to those who spent more years in school. It would be interesting to look at the relationship between the mother's education level and the amount of time she spends at home with her children, and from there analyze the effect it has on their education. It would make sense that a highly educated mother who spends a lot of time at home would have the greatest positive impact on her children’s education in comparison to a mother who has spent fewer years in school.
Just based on the article itself, it appears that money transfers to women heads of the household is a solid way to begin building up countries by enabling families to care for their children's physical and educational needs. In the long run, this strategy may help raise a lot of families above the international poverty line. I'm curious, however, how governments can combine this strategy with other ways to provide aid that is geared towards helping families get out of poverty in the short run.
I found Gitter and Barham’s analysis of the RPS to be informative. They concluded that conditional cash transfer programs that are geared toward women increase school enrollment and enable women to provide more food for her children. The discussion of power was particularly provocative. To me, it is counterintuitive that the relationship between a woman's relative power and enrollment rate, while positive at first, becomes negative at a certain level of power (although the data indicate that it may not be a negative relationship, it just captured the effect of diminishing marginal benefits). And at that certain level of relative power, women are more likely to remove their daughter from school than their son. Gitter and Barham, as well as many in this class, listed social and cultural factors as the primary reason this phenomenon exists. My initial concern with the analysis of the RPS was that it did not control for the possibility that men might be spending money on capital goods (i,e, farm equipment), which would potentially increase the families future earning potential. If men received the stipend and purchased farm equipment, they would need help from the children to operate it—hence lower enrollment. Gitter and Barham, however, discredited my argument about what they called, shared good. They maintained that the data illustrate that, when given extra money, men spend significantly more on nonessential items (such as certain foods, transportation, and alcohol).
Gitter and Barham use a tremendous amount of background material - the literature they use is popular within the field and is, I think, generally well established. As such, the authors are not making most assumptions in this article, but merely exploring the topic in a new way - by looking at impacts relative to female power.
Some of the concerns above, regarding their measurements - which type of food consumption is it, etc? - are very relevant to the topic at hand, however, we should keep in mind that an ever returning problem with econometrics is getting data - reliable data in a sufficient quantity. I assume the survey used was not carried out for the authors, meaning that they had little influence in what got measured.
The central argument in the article is concerned with the effect of RPS, considering the relative power of women. After reading the article, I remain skeptical that the use of relative years of education is a very useful proxy. Professor Blunch, I seem to recall, found evidence that increases in the mother's education in general lead to an increase in education and health levels of children. A question that to me remains unanswered is whether the increased "power" of the mom is relevant with respect to the father's level, or only in so far as to be an absolute increase in education of the mother.
The statistical significance of the findings are apart from the economic significance. The article does little in the way of exploring the latter - while milk consumption, as a proxy for expenditure related to children goes up, it is unclear how good of a proxy milk really is, and it is uncertain what the increase means for the improvement of children's nutrition in the long run - which is not an effect of the child's own increased education.
The part of the article that most stuck out in my mind was the evidence that women have more influence on their daughters' outcomes, while men have more influence on their sons' outcomes. While this is certainly consistent with the general public's preconceived notions of gender roles, it impresses upon me the absolute importance of programs such as RPS. The injustices against women in many developing countries are not going to go away overnight. Empowering women through these programs could be a step in the right direction to eradicate not only poverty, but the violent crimes committed against women throughout the world.
This article immediately made me think of the "Wages for Housework" I read earlier this week for Econ 211. That article was written by Lena Graber and John Miller, and it argues that women should be paid for their housework because it would allow them to be compensated for the large contributions they make to society that go undocumented in GDP.
What was great about this article is that it discussed how placing the money in the hands of the women made the money more likely to be spent on items such as food and school enrollment than if it were given to the husband. The "Wages for Housework" article discussed the potential for women to gain independence, but not the greater societal benefits discussed in this article.
Also, like other students I found the discussion about the negative impact additional female power could have on child enrollment highly fascinating. I would think women would always put a high value on their child's education, but I see that if they know they will receive a significant portion of the income generated from child labor it creates an incentive to make your children work. I would think that is a function of the education level of the mother, because an educated mother would hopefully realize the long-term benefits of education are significantly higher than the short-term benefits of child labor.
I agree with Chas’ comment above in that I found significance in the role that non-income effects play in influencing food expenditures. Due to the conditionality of school attendance that is inherent to the program, the finding that school enrollment increased was not particularly shocking. Perhaps the increase in food expenditures is an indication of the effects of increases in the choice sets of the poor. Although nutritional education programs are certainly valuable for the knowledge and understanding they provide, in a poor family where all money spent is relatively significant in the scope of the household, the decision must still ultimately be made to forgo other potential choices to purchase extra food/milk. Again, the educational programs undoubtedly influence this to some degree, but the income effect from this conditional cash transfer obviously must also play a role in expanding the choices the poor have to include purchasing greater amounts of food.
In addition, to echo some of the comments above, I was not completely clear on or convinced of the authors’ justification for utilizing the education ratio as an indicator of where household power lies. For me, the fact that such a large amount of men (49%) lacked even a single year of formal education detracted from the quality of the data presented. When education levels are at such low overall levels for men and women, I would think that any small differences in number of years of schooling would be more likely to be effectively overridden by cultural gender norms.
I believe it would be very interesting to combine the research that Gitter and Barham conduct here on short term effects with a later study that assesses the long term effects of RPS. It seems obvious that the increases in school attendance and food/milk expenditure in the short term would result in future adults that have higher productivity and earning potentials in the long run. The ability of this program, by focusing on both health and education, to potentially simultaneously address present problems in poverty and also look towards breaking the ongoing cyclical pattern of intergenerational poverty is especially impressive.
The article by Gitter and Barham’s is an interesting article that discusses giving conditional cash transfers to families. The essay concludes that mothers are more likely than fathers to use funds to improve their children’s welfare. This observation is interesting but not surprising to me. Many of these women in Nicaragua spend more time with their children at home and have a closer connection to them.
A somewhat shocking point is that if women reach a certain level of power within the family that it will eventually start to negatively benefit her children. I noticed that many others also found this fact surprising. One thought I had was once a woman gains more freedom in a Nicaraguan family, she may not be as strongly tied with her children anymore. Without freedom or power in a family, a woman may find herself forced into the role of tending to the house and children. As she gains power and freedom within her family, her role with the house and children may become more shared. This could cause some of her focus to drift away from her children. This is only a thought and at most is only part of the reason for this strange occurrence.
I tend to agree with Gormaner11 and Emily Darling on the idea that the authors may have overlooked certain cultural norms/traditions that could potentially play a big role in household power. Their measure of power is based on which parent, mother or father, has completed the most schooling. Intuitively, this seems as though it would make a difference in who has more power in the family; however, Gitter and Barham state on page 275 that, "In Nicaragua even when women have as much education as their husbands, they still may not have equal power, because of cultural norms." It seems as though years of schooling may not be the best proxy for household power. The authors do mention that other studies used male vs. female wages to determine household power, but that wage earnings are also flawed do to endogeneity with intrahousehold decision making and correlations with child wages which might both affect decisions about schooling. I am wondering if there is some other variable that could be used to proxy household power?
Though Gitter and Barham's article was moderately interesting, it was incredibly redundant and made far too many reference to "statistically insignificant" data. The article seemed to go in circles, failing to delve deeply enough at its most interesting parts. For instance, the authors mention how too much female power may in fact reduce schooling or at least have “no additional marginal impact.” Instead of discussing an issue that is seemingly central to this paper’s thesis, the authors opt to brush past it and conclude the paper.
Similarly, while the topic at hand is an interesting and certainly meaningful one, the authors could have done a better job conducting the study and conveying their findings. Its frustrating to hear that data that would likely help to validate the authors’ findings is not available in many cases (i.e. data on individual food consumption.) At the end of the article, the reader is left unsatisfied and confused, likely the result of reading the findings of a study that was largely based on insignificant or unavailable data.
The disparity of women and men's preferences on household consumption seems to be a huge problem in developing nations. It would be interesting to see how now developed nations, such as Ireland, have transitioned from men being less fiscally beneficial to their homes than their wives. If a society places an extra on emphasis, will the lower class men start adopting a similar mentality? I also with Justin, that the statistic on food consumption really stood out to me. I am not sure that I agree with their measurement that whomever received the most education serves as the more powerful figure in the relationship. That might be an indicator but it would be interesting to see what empirical evidence supports that conclusion. Overall an interesting article and a program that seems to be very supportive of increasing the human capital of their society.
The one aspect of this article that really stuck out in my mind was the compelling evidence suggesting that despite the implementation of these transfer programs to female's in the household, the average family consumption of food did not increase by any statistically significant measure. In the by-laws of the program, the RPS transfers aimed at increasing children's consumption of food as well as educational enrollment and health care access. But looking at the coefficients and statistical measures in table 2 of the article, evidence suggests that these programs still fail to adequately provide children in low-income areas with additional nutrients and food consumption.
ReplyDeleteWhile the article does point out that milk consumption offers a better understanding of household's expenditure on children's food consumption, I still believe that this measure fails to encapsulate overall food consumption. Milk may provide nutrition, but it only offers part of a healthy and balanced diet that growing children need. Why did the experiment not test to see if other valuable nutrient groups also received additional expenditure during the course of the experiment.
In order to correct the inability of the RPS programs to ensure extra household expenditure on food for children, the experiment should have tried alternative methods. An easy alternative would consist of utilizing food stamps as part of the income transfer to mothers. By partitioning an established portion of weekly or monthly transfers specifically for food stamps it could better guarantee that the funds were going specifically towards extra food for the household, not other things such as entertainment, etc.
Gitter and Barham’s in-depth analysis of the relationship between women’s education and household decision-making power, and their ability to use conditional cash transfers to send their children to school, buy more nutritious foods, and milk, combined heavy theoretical framework with extensive empirical evidence. Using the nonunitary theory of household preferences, the authors posited that given conditional transfers so that they could express their preferences fully, women would invest in education and health outcomes, more than their male counterparts would. However, the data show that the mother’s level of education is nonmonotonically related to her daughter’s education: if the mother gains too much power over the household (as measured in part by the ratio of mother’s education to father’s education), the enrollment of girl children falls, while boy children’s attendance always increases. Gitter and Barham call on Basu’s past research that posits that while child labor will bring increasing returns to the powerful mother, while the benefits of schooling probably stay the same. The propensity to withdraw girls from school before boys therefore suggests that the mother gets some added benefit from the labor of girls over the labor of boys, which may reflect cultural norms and gender inequities.
ReplyDeleteI was a little confused about the measure of household power. By taking the ratio of women’s education to men’s education, the authors posited that the more education the woman has in relation to the man, the more power she will have. But, if the cultural norms the authors discuss entail any gender inequity, I don’t know what, if any, real power would result from a woman’s premium of a few years of education, if that. The authors explicitly state that equal power does not necessarily follow from education equity, so why would increased power result from more relative education? In the broad scope of the paper, this probably isn’t that big of an issue, since a lack of female power in households did not decrease schooling expenditures. However, I found it interesting that “excessive” female power in the household may actually have a negative effect on children’s schooling, although it could be that there were simply no measurable marginal effects. I think that this finding lends itself to the question, Is the merely gender that facilitates increased education expenditures, or is it a combination of gender and a new fiscal enfranchisement of previously marginalized women that leads to increased schooling for their children?
The article was interesting because the study reasonably concluded that women would invest more money on their children's education and nutrition if they are receiving the cash transfers compared to men...what baffled me was how the amount of power a woman gains affects the amount she invests in her children's future. If there is a stark difference in power between the man and the woman, with the woman having much dominance and freedom in the family, why does this negatively impact the children?
ReplyDeleteThe impact on children also depends on the gender of the children. If the mother's power increases, boys will always benefit because they will continue to receive education; however, the situation with girls is opposite. Daughters' education will decrease depending on how much power the mother gains. As difficult as it is to measure power, there should be some research on the extent of financial security the mother has in the family through incomes and cash transfers. This study could potentially determine how much money should be allocated that will prevent the impact of cash transfers to adversely affect the children's future.
The authors of this article found that consumption of food did increase with an increase in household consumption. In fact, it was found that the variable Treat, representing the nonincome effects, shows a significant positive effect on food and milk expenditures. The estimated (nonincome) effect of RPS on milk expenditures per capita was $C72 which is more than twice the average baseline consumption. As for food expenditures, the average nonincome effect of RPS was found to be $C445 or a 15% increase from average baseline consumption.
ReplyDeleteThe nonincome effects of RPS also resulted in greater spending on education, which can be expected given the conditionality factor. However, the nonincome effect increase in food and milk expenditures indicate that other nonincome effects are at work. RPS held seminars on nutrition for households, and perhaps attendance at these boosted spending on food and milk. Since data on individual food consumption was not available, milk is simply a proxy for the increase in child food consumption as opposed to total household consumption rates.
The econometric experiment in this article highlighted some very important points from previous papers, and came up with conclusions of its own. The experiment did produce several valuable conclusions, but was a little wordy at times. The authors too often referenced data that was not statistically significant. I feel doing that draws attention away from their core results that exhibited strong statistical significance. It makes the paper feel less sure of itself, and does not hammer home the one or two very important points to be gained from it. They published their full results and they may just simply have too many variables. One example of a nonsignificant correlation they had to mention was the impact of an additional year of education between males and females. I think it is unfair for them to hint at a correlation when the statistics say there is not.
ReplyDeleteAnother flaw the authors may have with their experiment is that some of the Progesa efforts (although very important to the people everyone is ultimately trying to help) could cause bias in the models. They say themselves that women received lectures "as part of Progesa that encourage proper nutrition through expenditures on fruit, vegetables, and milk. These lectures are highly beneficial to the well being of women and their households. But if you are trying to conduct a raw experiment with clear control and treatment groups this may not be the best way. It would be interesting to see how results would differ if we conducted the same experiment with women who did not receive this nutrition education.
Both Professor Casey and the text have touched upon the important role women play in the developing process due to the high frequency of female-headed households, traditionally lower earning capacity of women and limited influence over spouse’s income. In addition, females in developing countries often have limited access to education, social security, government employment programs and formal sector employment, thus exacerbating their economic situation.
ReplyDeleteGitter and Barham’s empirical analysis points to a positive relationship between female power and school enrollment, but households with tremendously powerful women may see a decline in spending on education. Thus, programs such as the RPS program are helpful in increasing educational enrollment, improving the standard of living for the poor. It would be interesting to see further research on the conditionality of the program. What would the school enrollment results look like if the payments were not conditional? Would there be a correlation in parents’ literacy levels and children’s enrollment in school? In addition, what would the data look like for households run by single mothers? For the families participating in the RPS program, what did their expenditures look like after the program’s completion? Did they see their children’s education as more of a priority?
This article points out a lot of interesting aspects of the family structure in less fortunate families. For instance, the evidence makes a clear argument that female heads of household will be more conscious of the needs of the children when deciding where to allocate resources than male heads. However, it also seems to imply that having the male head of household have power is very beneficial as well as more of an example to follow. The article claims that a successful male head of household is very beneficial for success for young boys, while for young girls it is helpful to see a successful female head of household. Furthermore, males are more likely to see higher returns for each year of education than females are. Of course, this is not necessarily a just system, but it is a prominent aspect of our labor market today. Therefore I think it is safe to conclude that the most beneficial arrangement for children would be an equal partnership between both the male and the female head of household in financial aspects as well as all other aspects of running the household. This would provide children with both the essentials that they need and the examples that would best benefit them later on in life.
ReplyDeleteWhile the literature does not reveal whether it is more effective to give the transfer payments to men or women, this fact seems secondary to me. What seemed most important was the fact that this incentive based program to raise human capital, and eventually output, was effective on many levels and if output increases, the poverty level will decrease. By essentially subsidizing the opportunity cost of children working by putting children through school, the parents do not need to worry about this tradeoff. Furthermore, the children are increasing their levels of human capital by both increasing levels of schooling and visiting doctors regularly, increasing their long run productivity and increasing output as well. If the money the parents receive gets spent on food, that further increases children's health, as well as their own health, making them more productive and immediately helping decrease the poverty level. Other programs should use this as an example of a successful use of an incentive based program aimed at increasing human capital.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading this article. I thought their argument was well thought out and their initial objective was very interesting. Personally, I thought the influence of mothers would have been higher. Households with more powerful women have enrollment rates of 82%, while households with less powerful women had 78%. I think it would be interesting to see what the rates would be in a more family oriented home. (It is true that I do not know how well these family function and I actually think that topic is missing from this paper) How do these family work internally? I feel that the paper bounces from having the father posses the power to having the mother, while there may not be anything wrong with having one parent control everything, I find myself wondering what the figures for a would be for a family with the mother and father making decisions together. Also, the fact that maternal power is monotonic, but diminishing tells me that maybe more paternal influence would solve that problem of diminishing returns.
ReplyDeleteI too enjoyed the article. I would like to see more data or a further evaluation with regard to page 275 and the admission that culturally it is sometimes that a more powerful woman still doesn't mean equality with the husband. The article brings up some very interesting data about how effective a "more powerful" woman is in the household. However, it led me to think further. This experiment was only conducted in households with two parents in order to observer the family economic dynamic and chart the effectiveness of a woman gaining more decision-making power within the home. I would like to see more data concerning single mothers and/or widows with children, who in their home have all the “power.” I argue that if a conditional cash transfer were given to a single mother, that the data concerning her economic decisions would be a better control, as she is not hindered in any way by a husband or by cultural norms. Either way, I found the article as well as the data to be informative and useful.
ReplyDeleteThe information that I found most interesting in this paper was the profound effects that nonincome education programs have on food expenditures. In a study done by Hoddinott and Skoufias (2004), they found that the nonincome effects of the Progresa program account for half of the total increases in expenditures on food, fruit, vegetables and animal products. In the Gitter and Barham study, the nonincome impacts of RPS had substantial positive impacts on milk and food expenditures. The substantial impacts of the nonincome aspects of these two programs show the importance of not only increasing the financial capabilities of the poor but also increasing their knowledge on how to maximize the benefits of an increase in income. With an increase in knowledge about nutrition, the poor are able to increase their overall health and welfare more so than they would with only an increase in income. I would be very interested to see a study done focused on measuring the multiplier effect of implementing a program that has both income and nonincome aspects versus a program that only provides an increase in income or a program that only provides an increase in education.
ReplyDeleteWhile the article brought up many interesting factors that affect household consumption and investment choices related to children's education and their health, I was surprised the authors did not consider the cultural norms of Nicaragua to a greater extent. There was a lot of data supporting relationships between each parent and children, but there was no mention of the effect of an extended family or the number of children in the family on the consumption and investment choices of the household. The data make perfect sense to me when applied to a nuclear family, focusing strictly on a mother, father, and children, but studying extended families may have different results. It is important to consider how women are perceived in any society and the family dynamics given the cultural norms, regardless of how many years of education they have, in order to see how effective conditional cash transfer programs such as RPS and Progresa will be.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, given a conditional cash transfer program, I think it is especially important to educate women on how to best use there stipends. While the two programs discussed in this article "have been shown to be effective at increasing school enrollment rates and encouraging spending on food" (275), governments must consider the kind of food the household is now consuming. I think the same argument could apply to a safety net like food stamps in the U.S. While it is important that women have resources to influence household consumption and investment choices, their decisions should be educated ones, which promote healthy lifestyles.
G&B point out that payments going towards mothers of families are more likely to be spent on improving child welfare than that of the father. Looking at RPS and its effect on education, they look into income, conditionality, and intrahousehold impacts. I found it interesting that the RPS program looked at empowering women as a very important aspect of contributing to the child's welfare. This power is correlated to spending on children and enrollment, therefore resulting in the child's better well-being.
ReplyDeleteI found it important to note that the sex of the child resulted in the type of welfare received. For example, sons receiving better education while daughters receive better health. This reminded me of a female Indian friend of mine who's parents payed for her brothers's education but not hers because of her sex.
Another observation I found intriguing was that while increased parent education promoted increased children attendance in school (and thus a decrease in the transfer required by RPS), at a certain point (too high of an education), there is diminishing returns. The same goes with too much power.
Finally, I found it noteworthy that non-income effects appear to be more important in the studies.
The study proposed in the article drew many conclusions that were valid and backed by strong statistical evidence. Like Katie said, there should be a strong emphasis on women and their impact on the economy based on their views and their maternal nature. Through previous studies and research, the article looked at many different scenarios of allocating subsidies to intrahousehold families to decide which actions would provide the greatest utility and economic impact. Based on this evidence, the decision to allocate the money to women should increase total economic benefit to their families in the long run. The study focuses on normative economics as they consider the cause-and-effect of introducing the RPS program.
ReplyDeleteWhat I was confused about throughout the article was the importance of education and enrollment in the school systems as such a key factor in development. The last article we read described the school system in many low-income countries as inadequate and sometimes moving backwards in education. Is this the same case for the private schools and would the women ultimately spend more of the cash funds to send their children to the private schools? The women with greater power might but they might also want to distribute the funds more efficiently and get the greatest benefit out of the money which might not consist of getting the best education possible, just an education in general.
It would also be interesting to have done a smaller experiment of giving men the money and seeing the full effect of their decisions of allocating the funds. The actions may be entirely different from the women but they may have different ideas about how to provide for the family that may still be very beneficial. I did find the part about women gaining too much power and how it affects their decision to be another surprising discovery. How does the program decide how much to give and to whom so that women do not exceed their power?
I totally support the article's goal of advocating for the increased power of women, and thereby improving the welfare of their children, and I by no means mean to take away from that goal. However, I think this article begs the reader to ask whether or not something can be done to make men more likely to spend extra money on their children's education or nutrition? Is there a way to alter their behavior so that they spend more on improving the family's overall health- to activate a paternal instinct? Certainly the measures a mother can take are beneficial for the children, but it seems that they would be amplified if both parents were more apt to spend on improving the family's well-being.
ReplyDeleteWhile reading this article, what stuck out most to me was the fact that if a woman has enough power in the household, her children's school enrollment may actually start to go down. They cite a study done by Basu, and supported by other researchers in later studies, that the benefits of her children going to school will start to flatten out, while the benefits from child labor will actually increase. Thus, there reaches a point where the marginal benefit of having her children perform labor is higher than having them attend school. The findings in this article supported Basu's early hypothesis. This is a perplexing issue to me. We see women as suffering most, but if they gain too much power, then the benefits of programs like RPS for their children start to dwindle. Perhaps then we need not always focus on monetary distribution, but delve deeper into the lives of the poor and figure out what sociological changes can be made to encourage children to stay in school, no matter how powerful their parent is. Unfortunately, it seems like a never-ending loop because school enrollment drops because labor is marginally more beneficial, and labor wouldn't be as beneficial if living conditions were better. Ultimately, it all comes down to how do we improve the economic and social lives in developing countries.
ReplyDeleteI think it's interesting that Progresa incorporates lectures in their program to educate women about proper nutrition and influence their preferences. Based on the data presented by Gitter and Barham,I'm wondering if these lectures should not only be provided in other programs like RPS for women, but also in programs for men. Maybe men would have a higher propensity to spend on household shared goods if they participated in programs aimed at influencing their spending patterns in order to benefit their children. The lectures could even go beyond food and nutrition to emphasize the importance of school enrollment. Lectures of that nature could also help bring about change in the nonmonotonic relationship displayed between the power of women and the enrollment of girls in school.
ReplyDeletePart I of II
ReplyDeleteI found Gitter and Barham’s article to be a very informative and interesting piece—although non-paradigm shifting—and a bit heavy on the technical details of running regression analyses. That being said, the non-technical portions of the paper were, for the most part, very intelligible, even to me as a non-Economics major.
I was most perplexed by one issue of the author’s findings. Namely, I could not understand why, even after reading the author’s explanations, “when the woman’s power greatly exceeds her husband’s, additional female power reduces school enrollment” or why “[in] household with extremely powerful women, more female power may begin to reduce schooling or at least have no additional marginal impact.” (271, 287). On page 285, the authors seem to suggest (in my understanding at least), that while educating fathers may have a somewhat positive impact on their children, educating women will produce greater gains in children’s education. These two conclusions taken together would suggest (again, in my opinion) that more education is needed for both parents, since solely empowering women to a very high level seems to hurt educational attainments. Perhaps a social program could be tailored to teach women twice a week and men once a week, that way both parents advance their education (leading to greater gains for children) while women are given that extra boost to keep the program in line with the study’s conclusion about the relationship between a mother’s education and that her children.
The conditionality component of the program also resonated with me, mainly because we consider the use of conditionality while evaluating microfinance institutions (MFIs) in GDI. The Development Team—of which I am a member—is tasked with evaluating the social and economic impact of MFIs before we considering lending to them. When MFIs, for example, establish that potential customers must attend lessons (to my understanding, arrangements should be made so that customers do not have to skip work or engage in some other form of economically-deleterious activity in order to attend) on nutrition classes or attend doctor’s appointments (both services are provided by the MFIs at no cost as I understood) as a condition for obtaining a loan, that signifies to us as evaluators that MFIs are concerned with treating many aspects of poverty, not just those revolving around income. Since poverty alleviation is ostensible one of the goals of GDI, we look more favorably upon MFIs that attack to tackle poverty on multiple levels.
Part I of II
ReplyDeleteI found Gitter and Barham’s article to be a very informative and interesting piece—although non-paradigm shifting—and a bit heavy on the technical details of running regression analyses. That being said, the non-technical portions of the paper were, for the most part, very intelligible, even to me as a non-Economics major.
I was most perplexed by one issue of the author’s findings. Namely, I could not understand why, even after reading the author’s explanations, “when the woman’s power greatly exceeds her husband’s, additional female power reduces school enrollment” or why “[in] household with extremely powerful women, more female power may begin to reduce schooling or at least have no additional marginal impact.” (271, 287). On page 285, the authors seem to suggest (in my understanding at least), that while educating fathers may have a somewhat positive impact on their children, educating women will produce greater gains in children’s education. These two conclusions taken together would suggest (again, in my opinion) that more education is needed for both parents, since solely empowering women to a very high level seems to hurt educational attainments. Perhaps a social program could be tailored to teach women twice a week and men once a week, that way both parents advance their education (leading to greater gains for children) while women are given that extra boost to keep the program in line with the study’s conclusion about the relationship between a mother’s education and that her children.
The conditionality component of the program also resonated with me, mainly because we consider the use of conditionality while evaluating microfinance institutions (MFIs) in GDI. The Development Team—of which I am a member—is tasked with evaluating the social and economic impact of MFIs before we considering lending to them. When MFIs, for example, establish that potential customers must attend lessons (to my understanding, arrangements should be made so that customers do not have to skip work or engage in some other form of economically-deleterious activity in order to attend) on nutrition classes or attend doctor’s appointments (both services are provided by the MFIs at no cost as I understood) as a condition for obtaining a loan, that signifies to us as evaluators that MFIs are concerned with treating many aspects of poverty, not just those revolving around income. Since poverty alleviation is ostensible one of the goals of GDI, we look more favorably upon MFIs that attack to tackle poverty on multiple levels.
I generally like the article but in a lot of ways it leaves me wanting more. For one thing I would have liked to see more emphasis on social influences on women’s power in the household and whether the results of the study prove true in much more male dominated societies. I found it odd that the researchers found little evidence of men seizing the cash transfers from their spouses. It makes me wonder whether these results would be found in places like the Middle East where it is often unacceptable for women to act as the head of the household if not because of lack of income, education, etc. then because of external pressures from a male dominated society.
ReplyDeleteI also think it would be beneficial to look at what happens if the same cash transfer programs were set up for men. Because the study has more variables than just giving money to women vs. men it is hard to definitively attribute the results to simple gender differences. The study also provided nutritional classes and set up required schooling, etc in order to receive the cash transfers. If men were given these same classes and conditions then given the cash transfers it is possible the same results would be achieved regardless of gender.
One last thing I would like to know more about is the idea that giving a woman a lot of power could have little impact on the rate of children's education or even lessen it. This seems to hint that creating a female dominated household is as bad or worse than a male dominated one. It also could mean that a balanced household provides the best results for improving living conditions and increasing human capital.
In the end I think that giving women more power in the household would certainly have a positive impact but I don't think that this article contributed to that belief. While combined with other research this article could be of use on its own I am at a loss as to what conclusion to draw from it.
While I thought this article was interesting and clearly presented information that shows women have a greater influence on whether their children receive an education when their income increases, I think it would go a long way to understand what type of skills the children are receiving when they are in school. The quality of the education must be worthwhile for them to be enrolled. Otherwise, it might be more beneficial for them to gain skills by working in a family business, as suggested when women have a dominant position in the household and utilize their children as a source of labor. That being said, would the child's human capital be enhanced by working in such conditions? Certainly, experience is important, but education is equally important. I think it would be interesting to see what types of skills are being taught in order to advance these impoverished children compared to work experience.
ReplyDeleteI find it rather interesting that (page 5) Basu has suggested (and backed up) the claim that an increase in Women's power while at below or around the same level as the man's bargaining power there is a positive relationship between women's bargaining power and the children's schooling, but when it greatly exceeds it has a negative effect. The idea of having hyperbola shaped relation is a rather interesting one indeed. What is even more interesting is that the conclusion of this study was that the relationship between the Woman's bargaining power and male enrollment rates were always positive and that only when compared with girl's attendance rates did they posses this nonlinear relationship. It makes me wonder if the boy's relationship is also nonlinear but was not elastic enough near the higher levels of woman's bargaining power to register a need for a nonlinear formula? Another thing to think about is whether these results would remain robust if we repeated this study across more countries and continents, helping the study control for other exogenous variables, such as culture.
ReplyDeleteMany of you have already questioned the conclusion that after women acheive a certain amount of power they remove their daughters from school, but allow their sons to continue. Emily was surprised that the authors did not go into much detail regarding the Nicaraguan culture, and how that might explain some of these seemingly unusual empirical conclusions. I believe that had they looked farther into the Nicaraguan culture, especially relating to gender inequalities they would find an explanation.
ReplyDeleteIn my experience with India's rural poverty and the role of women in those societies, I believe that as women gain more power and education they realize that while education is beneficial, financial security allows for freedom. At least in poor rural India the role of the daughter is to work to benefit the household either in the field, doing chores, etc. Ultimately the daughters are married off, a dowry is made, an alliance made, and hopefully guaranteed safety and support for the girl. Unfortunatley, most of these marriages are not desired by the daughter, and while math and science are great, the best way to avoid getting married off is to be financially independent. As long as women are financially dependent on men, in particular their fathers they have little to no control over their fates. India has laws preventing girls from being married off under the age of 18 (they can marry at 16 with parental consent), but the enforcement of these laws, particularly in poor rural areas are rare. Especially, if those pursuing justice are financially compromised 13 year olds.
Considering that type of environment, I understand why a mother would pull her daughter out of school in order to ensure there are enough resources to keep her healthy (the authors did not specify who got the increased nutritional resources, they identified children but perhaps there were discrepancies based on gender), keep her safe, and if possible give her some form of finanical independence.
Now, I will probably find out that Nicaraguan culture is nothing like the scenario I just laid out, but there could still be explanations that would justify a mother's actions to pull her daughter out of school depending on the cultural norms and expectations and roles of women.
Gitter and Barham’s article “Women’s Power, Conditional Cash Transfers, and Schooling in Nicaragua” describes and examines Nicaragua’s Social Safety Net program, Red de Proteccion Social (RPS) and builds upon a foundation of relevant literature. By targeting women in making the cash transfers, school enrollment increased as did food and milk expenditures, raising overall welfare of the RPS households. The authors spend a significant portion of the article focusing on and measuring the power dynamic within households with regard to males and females and fund allocation, including the somewhat peculiar phenomenon of nonmonotonic relation for girls’ education based upon their mothers’ education level.
ReplyDeleteThe power of RPS to educate and improve lives is evident in the construction of the conditional cash transfer program where stipends are received in exchange for children’s school attendance and visits to health clinics. Such a program creates positive incentives and opens opportunities for further benefit. A similar social safety net organization, Progresa, based in Mexico, encouraged proper nutrition through classes offered to the program’s participants. It explained the nutritional benefits of milk and fruit and vegetables, and as a result, those household’s expenditures on milk, fruit, and vegetables increased. This instruction about nutrition was educational and offered a suggestion of how households could spend their extra income in a way that would have positive ramifications. The success of Progresa’s nutrition lectures advocates the addition of other such programs that could improve the well being of those receiving the conditional cash transfers. Health and safety seminars, education courses aimed at promoting literacy, and microfinance opportunities with accompanying business skill classes, could be implemented with exponentially beneficial results in low-income households and communities.
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ReplyDeleteI was glad to see the findings in the article found a positive correlation between money transfers to women of the household and the effects it had on their children’s enrollment in school and total food consumption within the household. I also think that for an initial investment of $224, the positive effects are impressive; with an estimated RPS impact of $517 on food and milk expenditures. Also, despite the fact that women sometimes played very weak roles in the home, it was good to see that the money that was distributed for RPS purposes was not withdrawn by the men for uses outside of education or food.
ReplyDeleteI was also intrigued by the finding that increasing the mother's education level always has a positive impact on the boys' education outcomes. Though it isn’t specified in the study, I am curious to see how much time mothers with little formal schooling spent at home in comparison to those who spent more years in school. It would be interesting to look at the relationship between the mother's education level and the amount of time she spends at home with her children, and from there analyze the effect it has on their education. It would make sense that a highly educated mother who spends a lot of time at home would have the greatest positive impact on her children’s education in comparison to a mother who has spent fewer years in school.
Just based on the article itself, it appears that money transfers to women heads of the household is a solid way to begin building up countries by enabling families to care for their children's physical and educational needs. In the long run, this strategy may help raise a lot of families above the international poverty line. I'm curious, however, how governments can combine this strategy with other ways to provide aid that is geared towards helping families get out of poverty in the short run.
I found Gitter and Barham’s analysis of the RPS to be informative. They concluded that conditional cash transfer programs that are geared toward women increase school enrollment and enable women to provide more food for her children. The discussion of power was particularly provocative. To me, it is counterintuitive that the relationship between a woman's relative power and enrollment rate, while positive at first, becomes negative at a certain level of power (although the data indicate that it may not be a negative relationship, it just captured the effect of diminishing marginal benefits). And at that certain level of relative power, women are more likely to remove their daughter from school than their son. Gitter and Barham, as well as many in this class, listed social and cultural factors as the primary reason this phenomenon exists.
ReplyDeleteMy initial concern with the analysis of the RPS was that it did not control for the possibility that men might be spending money on capital goods (i,e, farm equipment), which would potentially increase the families future earning potential. If men received the stipend and purchased farm equipment, they would need help from the children to operate it—hence lower enrollment. Gitter and Barham, however, discredited my argument about what they called, shared good. They maintained that the data illustrate that, when given extra money, men spend significantly more on nonessential items (such as certain foods, transportation, and alcohol).
Gitter and Barham use a tremendous amount of background material - the literature they use is popular within the field and is, I think, generally well established. As such, the authors are not making most assumptions in this article, but merely exploring the topic in a new way - by looking at impacts relative to female power.
ReplyDeleteSome of the concerns above, regarding their measurements - which type of food consumption is it, etc? - are very relevant to the topic at hand, however, we should keep in mind that an ever returning problem with econometrics is getting data - reliable data in a sufficient quantity. I assume the survey used was not carried out for the authors, meaning that they had little influence in what got measured.
The central argument in the article is concerned with the effect of RPS, considering the relative power of women. After reading the article, I remain skeptical that the use of relative years of education is a very useful proxy. Professor Blunch, I seem to recall, found evidence that increases in the mother's education in general lead to an increase in education and health levels of children. A question that to me remains unanswered is whether the increased "power" of the mom is relevant with respect to the father's level, or only in so far as to be an absolute increase in education of the mother.
The statistical significance of the findings are apart from the economic significance. The article does little in the way of exploring the latter - while milk consumption, as a proxy for expenditure related to children goes up, it is unclear how good of a proxy milk really is, and it is uncertain what the increase means for the improvement of children's nutrition in the long run - which is not an effect of the child's own increased education.
The part of the article that most stuck out in my mind was the evidence that women have more influence on their daughters' outcomes, while men have more influence on their sons' outcomes. While this is certainly consistent with the general public's preconceived notions of gender roles, it impresses upon me the absolute importance of programs such as RPS. The injustices against women in many developing countries are not going to go away overnight. Empowering women through these programs could be a step in the right direction to eradicate not only poverty, but the violent crimes committed against women throughout the world.
ReplyDeleteThis article immediately made me think of the "Wages for Housework" I read earlier this week for Econ 211. That article was written by Lena Graber and John Miller, and it argues that women should be paid for their housework because it would allow them to be compensated for the large contributions they make to society that go undocumented in GDP.
ReplyDeleteWhat was great about this article is that it discussed how placing the money in the hands of the women made the money more likely to be spent on items such as food and school enrollment than if it were given to the husband. The "Wages for Housework" article discussed the potential for women to gain independence, but not the greater societal benefits discussed in this article.
Also, like other students I found the discussion about the negative impact additional female power could have on child enrollment highly fascinating. I would think women would always put a high value on their child's education, but I see that if they know they will receive a significant portion of the income generated from child labor it creates an incentive to make your children work. I would think that is a function of the education level of the mother, because an educated mother would hopefully realize the long-term benefits of education are significantly higher than the short-term benefits of child labor.
I agree with Chas’ comment above in that I found significance in the role that non-income effects play in influencing food expenditures. Due to the conditionality of school attendance that is inherent to the program, the finding that school enrollment increased was not particularly shocking. Perhaps the increase in food expenditures is an indication of the effects of increases in the choice sets of the poor. Although nutritional education programs are certainly valuable for the knowledge and understanding they provide, in a poor family where all money spent is relatively significant in the scope of the household, the decision must still ultimately be made to forgo other potential choices to purchase extra food/milk. Again, the educational programs undoubtedly influence this to some degree, but the income effect from this conditional cash transfer obviously must also play a role in expanding the choices the poor have to include purchasing greater amounts of food.
ReplyDeleteIn addition, to echo some of the comments above, I was not completely clear on or convinced of the authors’ justification for utilizing the education ratio as an indicator of where household power lies. For me, the fact that such a large amount of men (49%) lacked even a single year of formal education detracted from the quality of the data presented. When education levels are at such low overall levels for men and women, I would think that any small differences in number of years of schooling would be more likely to be effectively overridden by cultural gender norms.
I believe it would be very interesting to combine the research that Gitter and Barham conduct here on short term effects with a later study that assesses the long term effects of RPS. It seems obvious that the increases in school attendance and food/milk expenditure in the short term would result in future adults that have higher productivity and earning potentials in the long run. The ability of this program, by focusing on both health and education, to potentially simultaneously address present problems in poverty and also look towards breaking the ongoing cyclical pattern of intergenerational poverty is especially impressive.
The article by Gitter and Barham’s is an interesting article that discusses giving conditional cash transfers to families. The essay concludes that mothers are more likely than fathers to use funds to improve their children’s welfare. This observation is interesting but not surprising to me. Many of these women in Nicaragua spend more time with their children at home and have a closer connection to them.
ReplyDeleteA somewhat shocking point is that if women reach a certain level of power within the family that it will eventually start to negatively benefit her children. I noticed that many others also found this fact surprising. One thought I had was once a woman gains more freedom in a Nicaraguan family, she may not be as strongly tied with her children anymore. Without freedom or power in a family, a woman may find herself forced into the role of tending to the house and children. As she gains power and freedom within her family, her role with the house and children may become more shared. This could cause some of her focus to drift away from her children. This is only a thought and at most is only part of the reason for this strange occurrence.
I tend to agree with Gormaner11 and Emily Darling on the idea that the authors may have overlooked certain cultural norms/traditions that could potentially play a big role in household power. Their measure of power is based on which parent, mother or father, has completed the most schooling. Intuitively, this seems as though it would make a difference in who has more power in the family; however, Gitter and Barham state on page 275 that, "In Nicaragua even when women have as much education as their husbands, they still may not have equal power, because of cultural norms." It seems as though years of schooling may not be the best proxy for household power. The authors do mention that other studies used male vs. female wages to determine household power, but that wage earnings are also flawed do to endogeneity with intrahousehold decision making and correlations with child wages which might both affect decisions about schooling. I am wondering if there is some other variable that could be used to proxy household power?
ReplyDeleteThough Gitter and Barham's article was moderately interesting, it was incredibly redundant and made far too many reference to "statistically insignificant" data. The article seemed to go in circles, failing to delve deeply enough at its most interesting parts. For instance, the authors mention how too much female power may in fact reduce schooling or at least have “no additional marginal impact.” Instead of discussing an issue that is seemingly central to this paper’s thesis, the authors opt to brush past it and conclude the paper.
ReplyDeleteSimilarly, while the topic at hand is an interesting and certainly meaningful one, the authors could have done a better job conducting the study and conveying their findings. Its frustrating to hear that data that would likely help to validate the authors’ findings is not available in many cases (i.e. data on individual food consumption.) At the end of the article, the reader is left unsatisfied and confused, likely the result of reading the findings of a study that was largely based on insignificant or unavailable data.
The disparity of women and men's preferences on household consumption seems to be a huge problem in developing nations. It would be interesting to see how now developed nations, such as Ireland, have transitioned from men being less fiscally beneficial to their homes than their wives. If a society places an extra on emphasis, will the lower class men start adopting a similar mentality? I also with Justin, that the statistic on food consumption really stood out to me.
ReplyDeleteI am not sure that I agree with their measurement that whomever received the most education serves as the more powerful figure in the relationship. That might be an indicator but it would be interesting to see what empirical evidence supports that conclusion. Overall an interesting article and a program that seems to be very supportive of increasing the human capital of their society.