Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/331319 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2025
Series/Report no.: 
GLO Discussion Paper No. 1689
Publisher: 
Global Labor Organization (GLO), Essen
Abstract: 
Bank accounts are an essential first step towards formal savings and credit in most countries, yet their impact on women's control over resources remains underexplored. I investigate the effects of 2014 policy in India that provided free bank accounts and led to an unprecedented increase in women's account ownership. This paper shows that bank account ownership improves households' financial access, and in certain cases increases women's decision making on household spending. Using a difference-in-difference estimation that exploits the sharp timing of the policy and a high-frequency household panel data, I find that women's account ownership increased household's likelihood to save in formal instruments and switch to formal sources of borrowing but did not affect consumption patterns consistent with women's preferences. Exploiting regional variation in pre-policy bank infrastructure, I further analyze the effects on women's self-reported decision-making. While districts with faster account expansion did not exhibit overall improvement of women's participation in household purchase decisions or spending autonomy, there were significant gains in districts where women had greater ex-ante mobility and households trusted banking institutions.
Subjects: 
Bank Account Ownership
Household Resource Allocation
Women's Decision Making
Government Policy
Women's Empowerment
India
JEL: 
D13
D14
G21
G28
G51
I38
J12
J16
R28
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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