Nina Buchmann

Title: Know Your Place - The Male Breadwinner and Female Homemaker Norms in Bangladesh

Abstract: Men globally out-earn women, reflecting not only market frictions but also intra-household social norms that shape earnings choices. We study how two such norms—the Male Breadwinner Norm (MBN), that men should earn more than their wives, and the Female Homemaker Norm (FHN), which we formally define as the belief that women should contribute more to household chores—affect couples’ labor and income decisions in Bangladesh. We develop a lab-in-the-field experiment in which husbands and wives make incentivized choices between paired job bundles varying in income, occupational prestige, and required household chores. These choices reveal each spouse’s willingness to pay (WTP) to comply with or violate each norm. We present pilot results from 20 couples, showing that both men and women forgo earnings to maintain the male-breadwinner and female-homemaker structure, and that prestige differences, not income alone, drive male-breadwinner compliance. The full study with 1,200 couples will provide the first experimental estimates of the behavioral costs of adhering to intra-household specialization norms.