Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Temporary migration as a mechanism for lasting cultural change: evidence from Nepal

Temporary migration as a mechanism for lasting cultural change: evidence from Nepal AbstractWhen a husband migrates, his wife may control more household resources and therefore change how the household spends income. Given the prevalence of seasonal migration in developing countries, even these temporary changes could affect economic development. The extent to which these changes persist after migration spells will magnify these consequences. Using panel data on rural households in Nepal, we examine how a husband's migration interacts with intrahousehold decision-making and consumption patterns both during and after migration spells. We find that a husband's absence is associated with a 10 percentage point increase in the expenditure decisions over which the wife has full control. This coincides with a shift away from expenditures on alcohol and tobacco in favor of children's clothing and education. Importantly, we find that migrant husbands resume their role in decisions following their return, but decisions are more likely to be made jointly. These persistent effects are consistent with a model in which households are pushed to a new, more-equitable equilibrium and then are driven to form habits, which, in turn, cause the new equilibrium to stick, thus facilitating long-term cultural change in gender norms. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png IZA Journal of Development and Migration de Gruyter

Temporary migration as a mechanism for lasting cultural change: evidence from Nepal

Download PDF
55 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/de-gruyter/temporary-migration-as-a-mechanism-for-lasting-cultural-change-c0xl3txttE
Publisher
de Gruyter
Copyright
© 2021 Sarah Janzen et al., published by Sciendo
ISSN
2520-1786
DOI
10.2478/izajodm-2021-0016
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

AbstractWhen a husband migrates, his wife may control more household resources and therefore change how the household spends income. Given the prevalence of seasonal migration in developing countries, even these temporary changes could affect economic development. The extent to which these changes persist after migration spells will magnify these consequences. Using panel data on rural households in Nepal, we examine how a husband's migration interacts with intrahousehold decision-making and consumption patterns both during and after migration spells. We find that a husband's absence is associated with a 10 percentage point increase in the expenditure decisions over which the wife has full control. This coincides with a shift away from expenditures on alcohol and tobacco in favor of children's clothing and education. Importantly, we find that migrant husbands resume their role in decisions following their return, but decisions are more likely to be made jointly. These persistent effects are consistent with a model in which households are pushed to a new, more-equitable equilibrium and then are driven to form habits, which, in turn, cause the new equilibrium to stick, thus facilitating long-term cultural change in gender norms.

Journal

IZA Journal of Development and Migration – de Gruyter

Published: Jan 1, 2021

Keywords: migration; decision-making; bargaining power; household economics; gender; O150; D130; F220; J160

There are no references for this article.