novafrica@novasbe.pt

NOVAFRICA Seminar:
“Measuring and Changing Control: Women Empowerment and Targeted Transfers”

On Wednesday, October 6th, at 2.00pm, the NOVAFRICA Center welcomes Alex Armand, from Universidad de Navarra to present his work on women empowerment and cash transfers in Macedonia.

Authors:
Alex Armand

Abstract:
This paper studies how targeting cash transfers to women affects their empowerment. We use a novel identification strategy to measure women’s willingness to pay to receive cash transfers instead of their partner receiving it. We apply this among women living in poor households in urban Macedonia. Firstly, we provide evidence that a unitary model is rejected in our setting. Secondly, we match experimental data with a unique policy intervention in Macedonia offering poor households cash transfers conditional on having their children attending secondary school. The program randomized CCT payments to household heads or mothers at municipality level, providing an exogenous source of variation in the way respondents experienced gender-targeted transfers in the recent past. We show that women who were offered the CCT reveal a lower willingness to pay, which is in line with theoretical predictions.