Sub-Saharan Africa continues to post one of the highest gender gaps in educational outcomes in the world. Gender gaps in educational outcomes might be attributed to an uneven allocation of household resources towards the schooling of boys and girls. In this paper, we interrogate this issue using...

We quantify how bargaining power is distributed when spouses make financial decisions together. We build a model in which each spouse has a risk preference and must bargain with each other to make asset decisions for the household. By structurally estimating the model with longitudinal data from...

We provide a method to estimate resource shares - the fraction of total household expenditure allocated to each household member - using OLS estimation of Engel curves. The method is a linear reframing of the nonlinear model of Dunbar, Lewbel and Pendakur (2013), extended to allow single-parent...

In response to the economic crisis created by the COVID-19 pandemic, many governments provided financial assistance to households. Using representative consumer surveys conducted during the pandemic in 2020, we examine the effects of this fiscal policy instrument on households in two emerging...

Social welfare payments (SWP) were designed with policy priority to transfer revenue to vulnerable groups, thereby addressing poverty and inequality. Previous studies have shown that SWPs alleviate poverty, but investigating their effect on well-being is sparse. We investigate the relationship...

This paper analyzes the impact of monetary policy on household saving in Japan between 1993 and 2017. Using annual data from the Japan Panel Survey of Consumers it is shown that monetary expansion has contributed to a widening gap in households’ net saving through an adverse effect on the...

The decision-making processes and outcomes of male and female household heads differ due to gender-based differences in preferences. In this paper, we assess the impact of this heterogeneity on household healthcare consumption in Thailand. Past studies modeling healthcare expenditures using...

Excessive household borrowing has been identified as an important determinant of financial crises. Borrower-based macroprudential instruments have been proposed as a possible remedy. In Germany, two instruments have been available to macroprudential supervisors since 2017: a cap on the...

A negative shock to one household member can have consequences for other household members. This paper demonstrates the extent of job lock and health insurance plan stemming from the unanticipated health shock of a child family member. In response to the shock, I estimate a 7 - 14 percent...

Over the last decades, the contemporary way of living, as well as the technology development, has increased the household electricity consumption. The excessive use of electricity has a negative impact on the environment, increasing the carbon footprint and contributing to the climate change....

We analyze the relationship between sex-ratios in the region of residence, and the time devoted to paid and unpaid work by couples in Mexico (2002, 2009, 2014), Peru (2010), Ecuador (2012), Colombia (2012, 2017) and Chile (2015). We find that sex-ratios are negatively related to the time devoted...

An experiment using a representative survey of the German population shows that letting respondents report a number rather than asking them to choose from a list of predefined ranges lowers the response rate for both perceived past and expected inflation and decreases (increases) reported past...

Measuring poverty trends and dynamics is an important undertaking for poverty reduction policies, which is further highlighted by the SDG goal 1 on eradicating poverty by 2030. We provide abroad overview of the pros and cons of poverty imputation indata-scarce environments, update recent review...

We investigate the role of financial advice in shaping the composition of household portfolios in Great Britain. Advice is associated with a reallocation of wealth away from real estate and towards bonds and stocks, especially when households seek financial advice "for investments". Having a...

Using a new survey of European households, we study how exogenous variation in the macroeconomic uncertainty perceived by households affects their spending decisions. We use randomized information treatments that provide different types of information about the first and/or second moments of...

This paper studies the determinants of why low-income households in Ireland abandon energy efficiency retrofit applications using administrative data from a targeted energy efficiency grant. By applying for the scheme the applicants overcome any financial barriers for undertaking retrofits...

We study how changes in interest rates affect the borrowing of households and the distribution of debt within the population. In a model of household borrowing with credit constraints and endogenous house prices, we show that less constrained households with more pre-existing housing wealth...

We provide survey evidence on how households’ inflation expectations matter for their spending highlighting a behavioral distortion compared to the New Keynesian setup. A large share of households expects prices to remain stable instead of increasing. Such a belief is linked to individual...

A game between a representative household and a government was analyzed. The household chose which fractions of two currencies to hold, e.g., a national currency such as a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) and a global currency such as Bitcoin or Facebook's Diem, and chose the tax evasion...

This paper studies seven rebate programs aiming at accelerating the replacement of energy-intensive household appliances. Based on a large product-level data set for several European countries, we study the effects on unit sales and prices of both subsidized and non-subsidized products. The...

Measuring poverty trends and dynamics is an important undertaking for poverty reduction policies, which is further highlighted by the SDG goal 1 on eradicating poverty by 2030. We provide a broad overview of the pros and cons of poverty imputation in data-scarce environments, update recent...

Consumption taxes are a pivotal yet largely unaddressed policy tool that shape the income distribution and potentially thwart the redistributive goals of social policy. Previous research showed how consumption taxes can elevate inequality and poverty on the macro level. However, different...

In a recent article, "Reexamining the influence of conditional cash transfers on migration from a gendered lens," Hughes (2019) claimed that conditional cash transfers, CCT, limit the likelihood of migration by women, compensating them for giving up an attractive migration option. I question the...

This paper investigates the potentially non-linear relation between households' indebtedness and their consumption between 2010 and 2014 in Belgium. To do so, we use panel data from the two waves of the Household Finance and Consumption Survey. Unlike previous studies, we find a negative effect...