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# Bargaining in the Family

32. The inequality in women's educational attainment and the evidence on health and nutritional status, together with other sociological evidence, suggest that the concept of a "unitary family" or household does not always apply. In the "unitary household" either everyone agrees on objectives and pools resources or one "family head" dictates family preferences and determines resource allocations. Much evidence suggPsts that in many societies people bargain in a family -- so it is important for analysts to grasp the concept of "cooperative conflict." (The "unitary family" is considered a special case of the broader bargaining model, but in the unitary family little bargaining occurs because one person dominates.) 33. Controlling income. The bargaining pattern may evolve as development proceeds: women are likely to see their own interests differently and to gain bargaining strength as they earn more and gain more control over income. The situation varies by culture, of course. Families in many countries in subSaharan Africa, Latin America, and East Asia now often reflect a bargaining model in which women have considerable bargaining strength (Lele 1986; Blumberg 1987; Schultz 1989; Folbre 1986). In Cameroon, men and women control income from different crops, and women prefer to work on their own crops even when the value of marginal output on their crops falls short of what they could produce working on their husbands' crops (see box) (Jones 1985). In Thailand and Peru, women who control assets of their own at marriage or who have other sources of unearned income tend more often to opt out of the labor force (Schultz 1989; Khandker forthcoming). Families in South Asia, where men are more dominant, generally behave more like the typical neoclassical household (Schultz 1989; Lele 1986). Yet in South Asia too this pattern is subject to economic influence: women's position in the family appears to get stronger -- and lead to more bargaining -- as women's cash income grows (World Bank 1989b; Sen 1987; Hossain 1988; Acharya and Bennett 1982; Folbre 1986; Blumberg 1987).

34. Men and women sometimes spend income differently (Blumberg 1987; World Bank 1989b). The survival rates of girls and boys, or those of men and women, may relate directly to the relative contributions of women and men to a family's cash and kind income (Schultz 1989). In India, where female mortality exceeds male mortality, district level data and household level surveys indicate that the more the local labor market activity and income of adult women relative to adult men, the greater the survival of girls relative to boys (Ros3nzweig and Schultz 1982). Research in India shows that women spend proportionately mote of the income they control on the family and less on personal consumption than men (World Bank 1989b).

35. Reaching women and girls. How, then, may the structure and incentives of the family affect measures meant to improve the situation of women? Resources transfers targeted to women and girls may be in vain if families compensate by reallocating other resources away from them. Some evidence suggests that this happeins: children involved in school feeding programs are sometimes denied the usual amounts of food as families compensate (Schultz 1989; Chen and others 1981;