Education and the empowerment of women in household decision-making in Spain

Abstract

It was analysed whether investment in the education of both women and men serves to empower wives resulting in more balanced household decisions being taken on matters related to consumption and financial management. They considered that household decision-making could be made by mainly the wife, mainly the husband or the couple acting jointly. They then applied multinomial probit models to the Spanish Living Conditions Survey of 2010. Results show that, when controlling for demographic, family and labour market characteristics, the level of education of both the husband and wife has a positive effect in terms of a more egalitarian decision-making process in relation to three areas of expenditure: daily shopping, expensive purchases of consumer durables and significant expenditure on children. However, only women's education has a positive effect on borrowing money and no effect of education is observed with regard to the use of savings. Results are less conclusive for households where decisions are taken primarily by the wife or husband, since men's education increases the role of husbands in the household making-decision process whereas no effect of wives' education is observed.