Empirical studies of bio-cultural commitments and economic choices

Abstract

To be human is to experience biology, culture and the necessity of economic interaction. My research interests answer a broad question, "How do biological and cultural commitments interact with economic incentives to shape day-to-day choices?" Social welfare functions should take into account how bio-cultural commitments may rescale the marginal benefit of an act; a rational economic actor is seeking to satisfy their preferences, yet in doing so they are also intending to minimise the dissonance between their biological and cultural commitments and their response to economic incentives. The first article of my thesis is titled 'Gender-neutral household bargaining in the absence of divorce laws'. Using the collective model of household bargaining, I find that analysing couples from the perspective of high-wage partner relative to low-wage partner ensures key bargaining factors are statistically significant, unlike the traditional husband/wife dichotomy. I study how partners' differences in kinship attitudes, in a country of homogeneous and progressive divorce laws, affect household bargaining. I find that divergent social attitudes can act as a substitute for laws. I find that specialization in the household between paid and unpaid work is driven by partners' differences in bargaining power, rather than the result of gender-specific preferences regarding time allocation. The second article of my thesis is titled 'Inequality resulting from mismatch between mothers' actual and desired labour supply'. I provide evidence that earnings inequality amongst females, driven by the heterogeneous impact of motherhood on females' labour supply, is more pronounced than inequality amongst males and females. To do so, I and examine differences between an individual's ``desired" hours worked and their position in the distribution of actual hours worked. This documents both under- and over-employment to be more pervasive than found by previous work. Using inequality indices, I demonstrate how earnings inequality amongst females would decline if mothers were able to close the gap between actual and desired hours. The third chapter of my thesis is titled 'Gender, biology, and time use'. I utilise an index from biological anthropology, Gendered Fitness Interest (GFI), that calculates the sex-bias of how individuals' genes will be passed on. Individuals may adopt behaviour consistent with gendered attitudes that do not prioritise their own needs, but prioritise the needs of their descendants. If a female (male) has many female descendants of reproductive age they take actions reflective with internalising a more progressive gender attitude and in turn devote more (less) time to labour market work. If a female (male) has many male descendants of reproductive age they take actions reflective with internalising a more traditional gender attitude and perform more (less) non-paid work. I demonstrate how ignoring that gender attitudes influence 'stopping-rule' behaviour can provide biased estimates of the effect of descendant kin on gendered socio-economic outcomes. Studying economic preferences can help us understand causes of behaviour, however expanding this line of inquiry to consider the role of biological and cultural commitments can help us understand reasons for behaviour.