Intrahousehold Bargaining, Birth Order and the Gender Gap in Schooling: Evidence from India

Farzana Afridi, University of Michigan

While considerable empirical attention has been paid in the economic literature to gender bias in allocation of household resources between sons and daughters, limited research has been done on how the relative bargaining strength of the mother and father might influence this bias. This paper studies the impact of quantitative and qualitative determinants of mother's bargaining strength on intra-household investment in education in India, by the gender and order of birth of a child. I use an indicator for the mother’s status in the household and her level of education as determinants of her bargaining power. The results suggest that an increase in mother’s education and autonomy reduces the bias against a female child’s educational attainment. Last-born girls have greater probability of attaining a higher grade relative to early born girls. These conclusions persist even when I control for unobservable family heterogeneity and regional differences in returns to female education.