Does self-esteem affect women’s intra-household bargaining power: evidence from China

ABSTRACT

This paper addresses the question of whether self-esteem affects women’s intra-household bargaining power by using the National Survey on Women’s Social Status of China (NSWSS). While providing a conceptual framework, the study employs econometric models to show that self-esteem positively affects women’s intra-household bargaining power. The analyses, using an instrument-variable approach, and using different indicators of household bargaining power, further collaborate the robustness of our conclusion. Overall, the empirical study provides important insights on future academic research and policy measures in women’s empowerment.

KEYWORDS:

• Intra-household bargaining power
• self-esteem
• conditional mixed process
• the National Survey on Women’s Social Status of China

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• J16
• D10
• O12

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ We do not display the balance test results for sake of saving space. The result is available on request..

² The NSWSS survey selects one adult aged 18 and above per household and therefore the men and women in the sample are not matched couples. So, here, we only measure women’s self-esteem instead of the difference of self-esteem between women and their husbands..

³ This is not unusual. In an important review, Gray-Little, Williams, and Hancock (1997) pointed out that the 10-item RSES ‘could be shortened without comprising the measurement of global self-esteem’. In psychology literature, Tafarodi and Swann (1995) used six items in the RSES, and only two items between their study and the RSES overlapped..

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [42001118]; the Advance Research Fund for Humanities and Social Sciences of Zhejiang University of Technology [SKY-ZX-20220243]