The body mass index (BMI) is the primary means of classifying obesity and reflects a complex set of interactions related to the institution of marriage and household characteristics. There is an inverse relationship between BMI and height, and height reflects the cumulative price of net...

Although there are numerous studies of the dowry phenomenon in India, research pertaining to the custom in the rest of South Asia is sparse.The aim of this paper is to study dowry payments in Pakistan.Several interpretations for dowry are distinguished using a simple theoretical framework and...

This paper investigates individual motives to participate in rotating savings and credit associations (roscas).Detailed evidence from roscas in a Kenyan slum (Nairobi) suggests that most roscas are predominantly composed of women, particularly those living in a couple and earning an independent...

We use micro data from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service to document how households’ taxliabilities vary with income, marital status and the number of dependents. We report facts onthe distributions of average and marginal taxes, properties of the joint distributions of taxespaid and income,...

The focus of this study is to estimate an equation explaining the determinants of dowry. In this paper, we address a very common socio-economic problem for sub-continent, the problem of dowry. From a social planner's perspective, who wants to reduce overall dowry transfers, we consider the...

This study investigates the effects of perceived unemployment risks on the distribution of bargaining power between spouses in a household context. As the replacement ratio is rarely above 50%, becoming unemployed has serious consequences on an individual’s consumption, savings and wealth. The...

We propose a novel structural method to empirically identify economies of scale in household consumption. We assume collective households with consumption technologies that define the public and private nature of expenditures through Barten scales. Our method recovers the technology by solely...

I explore a unique exogenous instrument to examine how the intra-familial position of women influence health outcomes of their children using micro data from Ghana Demographic and Health Survey, 2008. Using the 2 SLS-IV estimation technique, I build a model of household bargaining and child...

During the 20th century, Russian women were assigned the triple role of social and political activists, workers, caregivers and mothers. This paper makes an overview of the main steps undertaken first by the Soviet and later by the modern Russian governments to influence family formation models...

This paper provides evidence of the long-term relationship between male-to-female spousal violence and the Oportunidades conditional cash transfer program. It uses data from three nationally representative surveys that include detailed information on the prevalence of spousal abuse and threats...