Mother-father differences in spending on children: Evidence from Uganda

VoxDevTalk

Published 15.03.23
Photo credit:
Brian Wolfe/flickr

Mothers and fathers spend differently on daughters relative to sons, which can perpetuate the benefits of empowering women today

Read "Detecting Mother-Father Differences in Spending on Children: A New Approach Using Willingness-to-Pay Elicitation" by Rebecca Dizon-Ross and Seema Jayachandran here.

In this episode of VoxDevTalks, Rebecca Dizon-Ross joins us to discuss new research in Uganda with Seema Jayachandran, which explores whether mothers and fathers differ in their spending on their daughters relative to their sons. To measure this, they compare mothers' and fathers' willingness to pay (WTP) for specific goods for their children, which reveals that fathers have a lower WTP for daughters' human capital compared to sons. Rebecca explains what factors may underlie this, and what this might tell us about the self-perpetuating benefits for daughters of empowering women.