He Says, She Says: Spousal Disagreement in Survey Measures of Bargaining Power

Abstract

Measures of control over assets and participation in household decisions are often used as indicators of bargaining power. Yet, spouses do not necessarily provide the same responses to questions about these topics. Using household survey data from Bangladesh, we examine differences in spouses' answers to questions regarding women's involvement as asset owners and decision makers and develop a model to understand what these differences tell us about household behavior. Disagreement is substantial and systematic; women are more likely than men to say that women own assets and are involved in decision making. These patterns suggest the presence of asymmetric information in the household, in the form of hidden assets or decisions. Finally, correlational analysis shows that when women claim their involvement but men do not include them, it is positively associated with good outcomes for women, but to a lesser extent than when husbands agree that their wives are involved.

Spousal concordance in joint and separate households: Survey evidence from Nepal

“…numerous to effectively analyze, we collapse responses into a smaller number of categories. We are particularly interested in whether there is concordance in responses about the wife's roles and thus we follow Ambler et al (2021) and analyze the following categories: (1) neither spouse says the wife owns or decides; (2) both spouses say the wife owns or decides; (3) the wife says she owns or decides, but the husband reports that she does not; and (4) the husband says the wife owns or decides, but she reports that she does not. The first two categories represent measures of concordance, and the latter two represent discordance.…”

“…Asking the same set of questions to multiple household members generates a wealth of information, but it also creates the challenge of determining how to analyze multiple-and sometimes contradictory-answers to the same question. Frequently, studies find that husbands and wives provide different answers when asked the same survey questions, particularly on questions about consumption decisions and about women's autonomy (Allendorf, 2007a;Ambler et al, 2021;Anderson, Reynolds, and Gugerty, 2016;Deere & Twyman, 2012;Becker, Fonseca-Becker, & Schenck-Yglesias, 2006;Ghuman, Lee, & Smith, 2006;Jejeebhoy, 2002). While many studies in Asia reveal that husbands report higher levels of wives' involvement in decision making compared to wives' reports (Ghuman, Lee, & Smith, 2006;Jejeebhoy, 2002), both Allendorf (2007a) for Nepal and Ambler, Doss, Kieran, & Passarelli (2021) for Bangladesh find that wives generally report that they have a larger role in decision making than their husbands acknowledge.…”

“…A smaller strain of literature uses patterns of concordance to further understand household dynamics. Ambler et al (2021) study asset ownership and decision making in Bangladesh and develop a framework that investigates potential drivers of the observed discordance. Their findings suggest that while measurement error likely accounts for some portion of the discordance, asymmetric information in the form of hidden assets or decisions also contributes to the patterns seen in the data.…”

“…First, we analyze the extent to which husbands and wives provide the same responses about who owns assets and makes decisions. We follow the typology used in Ambler et al (2021) and focus on whether or not wives and husbands report the same information regarding women's roles. We also adapt this typology to examine husbands' and wives' reports regarding the role of others in the household.…”

“…The high levels of concordance in the survey data are driven by both spouses reporting that the wife does not own assets or participate in decision making. Previous work suggests that women acknowledging their role even though men do not is associated with improved outcomes for women, although it is better when both men and women acknowledge women's roles (Ambler et al, 2021, Annan et al 2019.…”