Intrahousehold Resource Allocation and Women’s Power. The Effect of FAMILIAS EN ACCIÓN on Colombian Households.

Familias en Acción, during more than a decade, has encouraged investments in human capital and children’s health in poor households in Colombia. The program has been able to benefit a wide range of population to such a great extent, that now the program has become a national public policy. While the positive effects on health and education have been widely studied, there are some other important issues that this program is trying to affect that have not been analyzed enough. That is why this study seeks to test the unitary model of household behaviour and to measure changes in women’s bargaining power inside households. We performed a diff in diff model to see the change of the share of the household budget spent on certain assignable and nonassignable goods in the short and long run. The main results provide evidence of a change of the consumption pattern of the household, which leads us to the rejection of the unitary model. Also, results give certain evidence indicating that women’s bargaining power within the household might have been improved.