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Mothers Care More, But Fathers Decide: Educating Parents about Child Health in Uganda

American Economic Review 2017 107(5), 496-500
Research on intrahousehold decision-making generally finds that fathers have more bargaining power than mothers, but mothers put more weight on children's well-being. This suggests a tradeoff when targeting policies to improve child health: fathers have more power to change household behavior in ways that improve child health, but mothers might have a stronger desire to do so. This paper compares health classes in Uganda that enrolled either mothers or fathers. We find that educating mothers leads to greater adoption of health-promoting behaviors by the household. In addition, educating one parent leads to positive spillovers on the other spouse's health behaviors.