Gender, Bargaining, and Investment: Experimental Evidence from Rural Cameroon

Intra-household bargaining power is widely assumed to influence key household investment decisions, yet how this power operates within the constraints of prevailing social norms remains poorly understood. This paper examines decision-making dynamics within households in rural Cameroon using a lab-in-the-field experiment where spouses make risk-based financial choices individually and jointly. We develop a novel, behavior-based measure of wives' bargaining power from these joint decisions and link it to household investments in children’s education and health. Despite substantial variation in bargaining power across households, we find no significant relationship with investment outcomes. Survey evidence reveals that even women with high bargaining power overwhelmingly defer to their husbands in these domains, reflecting strong gendered norms around responsibility. Our findings underscore the importance of addressing normative constraints alongside economic interventions to meaningfully shift intra-household decision-making and investment behavior.