Seminar 271, Development: Nina Buchmann - “Know Your Place: The Male Breadwinner and `Female Homemaker Norms’ — Evidence from Bangladesh”

Event details Date: Monday, August 31, 2026 Time: 3:30 PM to 5:00 PM Location: 648 Evans Hall Type: Lecture / Workshop About this event 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, providing the first experimental estimates of the behavioral costs of adhering to intra-household specialization norms. Official event details: https://events.berkeley.edu/econ/event/327695-seminar-271-development-nina-buchmann-know-your-place