This is a Man's World : Crime and Women's Bargaining Power

Exposure to community violence is a pervasive development challenge that goes beyond armed conflicts. Millions of people live in high-crime areas exposed to numerous and gender-differentiated negative impacts. This paper studies the effects of violent crime on intra-household resource allocation and bargaining power. I exploit an unexpected, plausibly exogenous, and geographically heterogeneous increase in local violence in Mexico and a longitudinal survey of households formed prior to the crime increase. I first estimate a system of demand equations and find the escalation in violence reallocated household expenditures toward male goods, at the expense of food and other household necessities. These findings would typically be interpreted as a deterioration in women’s bargaining power. But changes in local violence may have also affected consumption preferences. To provide further evidence, I complement the analysis with reduced-form estimates of changes in intra-household decision-making, structural estimation of the determinants of women’s control over household resources, and the analysis of single households’ consumption allocations. Finally, I discuss the evidence on the role played by fear of victimization