Essays on Gender, Culture, and Household Economic Behavior

This thesis includes three essays that explore how cultural norms, gender dynamics, and climate change affect household and individual outcomes in developing countries.

The first chapter sheds light on the influence of deep-rooted cultural norms on women's agency in Ghana and their far-reaching implications for households' spending decisions on water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH). In particular, the paper exploits variation in cultural norms within matrilineal and patrilineal societies across households in rural Ghana to study how the relative intra-household bargaining power of women influences households' expenditure on WASH. It first provides a simple framework based on the unitary and collective household models. Household members may have different preferences for WASH items and investments, which are either private or public to household members. This framework generates a holistic channel through which WASH interventions and policies can be designed for improved WASH in the household, while targeting women. In principle, we find that the marginal effect of women's bargaining power in matrilineal and patrilineal households has differential impacts on households' budget shares allocated toward improved WASH. However, this impact depends on whether the household WASH item is private or public and how costly this item might be.

The second chapter examines the relationship between climate-induced income shocks, cultural norms, and the hazard of entering first marriages among men and women. Using data from Malawi, a country highly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change, the paper shows that drought and flood shocks differentially influence the hazard of entering first marriages and husband-wife age gaps, with nuanced variations across bride price and non-bride price societies. Notably, in bride price societies, drought exposure leads men to delay their first marriages due to the required bride price transfer, unlike in non-bride price societies. Additionally, the husband-wife age gap is larger in bride price societies relative to non-bride price societies, and drought exposure further widens this gap. Further analysis shows that, the widening age gap between spouses is manifested in the increased likelihood of young women entering polygynous marriages as junior wives in bride price societies. Flood shocks, however, do not exhibit a similar effect on first marriage hazards and the age gap. This is primarily due to the localized nature of floods, which are not as spatially correlated as drought shocks, and hence more plausible smoothing mechanisms. From a policy standpoint, policies and interventions that generate windfall revenue during adverse economic shocks could have unintended consequences, especially for women, if the type of shock and cultural setting are not taken into account. Cash transfers, for example, during droughts may have larger effects in bride price societies if targeted at households with marriage-age girls.

The third chapter analyzes the effect of early-life rainfall shocks on breastfeeding duration among children born to co-wives in polygynous rural households in Malawi. It specifically explores how deviations from average rainfall during a child's birth and second year influence breastfeeding patterns. The findings reveal that rainfall shocks during a child's second year significantly prolong breastfeeding, with a stronger effect observed among children of senior wives. Disaggregating the effects, we find that negative rainfall shocks lead junior wives to breastfeed longer than senior wives, while rainfall shocks in the dry season extend breastfeeding duration compared to the wet season. These results suggest that the opportunity cost of maternal time, driven by agricultural labor demands, and the decision-making power of co-wives are critical mechanisms linking weather shocks to breastfeeding practices. The study further highlights the importance of considering family structures and maternal labor dynamics in policies promoting optimal breastfeeding amidst a changing climate in Sub-Saharan Africa.