It is not power, but how you use it: Experimental evidence on altruism from households in Pakistan

ABSTRACT

We investigate altruism among household members in the presence of information asymmetry using artefactual experiments in Pakistan. Having a family member who does not respect one’s control over earned property makes generosity less likely within the experiment. Women, who display greater entitlement over own earnings, are less generous when they can conceal their allocation decisions, showing that self-regarding behaviors are driven by pent-up demand for household members to respect their control over resources. Our findings reveal that understanding household dynamics can be critical for policy makers wanting to maximize welfare outcomes in social protection programs.

KEYWORDS:

• Household decision making
• field experiment
• altruism
• opportunism

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• C93
• D13
• D82
• J16
• O12

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

¹ A total of 26 sessions in three districts of Punjab: Bahawalpur, Gujrat and Sialkot. Average monthly household income in Gujrat, Bahawalpur and Sialkot are $520, $300 and $290, respectively (Inflation adjusted estimates from PSLM 2010–11). Appendix Table A1 shows summary statistics. Detailed protocol and instructions are available in the Online Appendix.

² Results presented in section 3.2 are robust to task order effects. Participants earned 1400 PKR on average. All payments were in private.

³ The Online Appendix shows the full list of questions on female agency asked in the survey and describes how the agency index used in the analysis is constructed.

⁴ These results are also presented graphically in Appendix Figure A1.

⁵ These results are robust to order effects, and to alternative specifications of the low respect and female household agency indicators. For instance, we define Low respect as taking more than 50 per cent of the partner’s earned endowment in the TG. Tables B1 and B2 in the Online Appendix present these results.

Additional information

Funding

This project was funded by the International Growth Centre and was only possible with the support of Zara Murtaza, Kamran Azim (Kashf Foundation, Pakistan); and Dr. Naved Hamid (Lahore School of Economics). The study received Institutional Review Board approval from the Lahore School of Economics RERC on 24 April 2015.