My research interest is in the area of gender economics. It is well-known that there exist gender gaps in access to healthcare, education, jobs, leisure, and consumption goods even within a family. These gaps are very pronounced in most low and middle income countries, such as India. Gender gaps in these outcomes adversely affect the welfare of women and girls around the world.

In my research, I use large datasets and rigorous econometric methodologies to investigate the role of various factors that influence gender gaps in different outcomes. At the same time, I also examine whether public policy can mitigate these inequalities. I often study the role of cultural norms and historical institutions in influencing differences between women’s and men’s welfare.

In one of my current research projects, along with Dr Sutirtha Bandyopadhyay from IIM Indore, I am investigating how widowhood can adversely affect women’s access to consumption goods within the household. In most developing countries, cultural norms around widowhood imply that marital status can have an important influence on women’s well-being. Using representative household consumption expenditure data from the National Surveys of India, we explored whether access to consumption for women differed, when at least one widowed woman was present in the household. We used gender specific information on clothing expenditure and computed the monthly expenditure on women’s clothing as a proxy for women’s access to consumption resources within a household. An analogous calculation can be done for men’s access to consumption resources as well. In the absence of data on consumption expenditure of each individual in the household, recent research suggests that expenditure on items that only a specific type of individuals consume can be a reasonable proxy of their access to consumption goods within a household.

Our initial exploratory analysis using data that spans across multiple decades reveals that households that have a widowed woman have lower consumption expenditure on women, compared to a household where there are only married women. One may be tempted to conclude that households that have widowed women are poorer than those that do not. But we have been comparing households that are similar to each other even in terms of overall wealth or income. We also don’t find men’s access to consumption resources being lower in households where a widow is present. Further, currently widowed and married women are not found to be remarkably different from each other in terms of their human capital outcomes that are determined prior to marriage, indicating that widowed women are not likely to start out as more disadvantaged. These findings signify that widowhood can potentially contribute to higher female poverty by lowering women’s access to consumption resources.

In a country that is largely dependent on agriculture, such as India, rainfall plays an important role in influencing consumption expenditures and therefore well-being of households in rural areas. We extend our analysis to understand how beneficial or adverse rainfall events can influence expenditures on women’s goods – do women in a household gain differently from beneficial rainfall events depending on whether at least one among them is a widow? Interestingly, we find that spending on women’s goods increases by a lesser magnitude when a widow is present in the household, despite a beneficial rainfall. Therefore, widowed women are less likely to benefit from good rainfall in agrarian households than their currently married counterparts. We don’t find similar effects for expenditure on men’s goods. This finding is important as it tells us that even with events which are likely to benefit agricultural households overall, women benefit differently depending on their marital status. Additional analysis suggests that areas that practised the custom of widow burnings historically are associated with lower access to consumption for widowed women today. Therefore, culture and potential persistence of historical institutions may explain why widowed women are unable to face an increase in access to consumption even if their households may overall face a beneficial shock; thereby exacerbating household inequality.

Bipasha Maity is Assistant Professor of Economics. Her research largely focuses on the economics of gender. In one strand of her current research, she is studying how widowhood and historical institutions around women’s property rights continue to influence women’s welfare.