Intrahousehold Resource Allocation in Egypt: Women Empowerment and Investment in Children

Abstract

In this paper, we use the 2006 Egypt Labor Market Panel Survey to gauge and compare the effects of parent-specific characteristics, namely the educational attainment and the contributions made by the mother and the father to marriage costs, on children’s welfare, which we measure by the cohort-mean adjusted years of education. The empirical model used for this purpose is a reduced-form regression model inspired by the collective rationality model of household decision. The analysis suggests that mothers’ and fathers’ characteristics have differential effects on children’s education. In particular, the mother’s contribution to marriage costs, unlike the father’s, positively affects child schooling. The results for parent’s educational attainment are more nuanced. We discuss the policy implications of these findings.

Keywords:

• Women empowerment
• household decisions
• assets at marriage
• children’s welfare
• property rights