finds no significant impacts on the choice and/or quantity of durables purchased in the household
in aggregate, nor broken down by gender. Table 5 analyzes the same dependent variables, but
separately for those above and below the median in terms of household decision making power at
the baseline (similar to Table 3 Panel B and Panel C when analyzing the impact on specific
decision-making power). We find that both the number of items purchased and the total
expenditures of consumer durables traditionally associated with female use in the Philippines
increase for married women who were below the median in pre-existing bargaining power. This
effect is smaller, and not statistically significant, for married women above the median. This
finding is consistent with the impact on decision making ability for purchases of personal items
and durable goods. We do not, however, find that married households where the women are
below the median in decision making ability increase expenditures on other non-female specific
durables. Likewise, we do not find any effect for men offered SEED, either in aggregate or for
those above or below the median in household decision making power (Table 5, Panels C and D).
Taken together, the presence of both direct impact on self-reported decision making
measures, and a greater composition of female oriented durables, suggest that women who were
offered the commitment savings product indeed increased their power within their household.
Crowdout
Next we examine whether the increase in savings held alone by the participant led to a
reduction in savings held jointly with their spouse. Table 6 reports the intent-to-treat (ITT) effect
of random assignment to the treatment group on several asset and financial savings categories as
measured in the one-year follow-up survey, as well as the one-year administrative data (reported
in an earlier paper) and new 32-month administrative data.
We first show the replication of our earlier results (Column 1) which demonstrate the simple
effect of the treatment on savings held at the Green Bank one year after the treatment began.
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