Gender-Targeted Direct Wage Deposit
RCTReview
When public work wages are deposited into household accounts controlled by male relatives, women lack direct financial control over their earnings, discouraging them from entering the labor force.
Picture this
Direct wage deposit works like giving a worker their own private, lockable piggy bank rather than putting their paycheck into a family bowl on the kitchen table. When money goes straight into an individual's hands, they control how it gets spent, which makes working for money much more rewarding and worthwhile.
What the evidence says
Three years after implementation, average total wage deposits reached US$66 at contemporary exchange rates (equivalent to annual average wage earnings), and assignment to full treatment yielded a 0.12 standard deviation increase in the female banking autonomy index.
- Who was studied
- N = 5,851 women in 197 gram panchayats (village clusters) across Gwalior, Morena, Shivpuri, and Sheopur districts in Madhya Pradesh, India.
- How
- Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) with baseline census (2013–2014), short-run survey (2015), and long-run survey (2017) comparing a control group against four distinct treatment arms.
What to do
Transition public employment and work guarantee payments from joint household accounts to individual, gender-targeted bank accounts linked to direct deposit infrastructure.
From the source
"Relative to just providing bank accounts, additionally providing training and direct deposits changed gender norms: women worked outside the home more, had greater financial agency, and were more likely to approve of women working."
Impact_of_Financial_Control_on_Womens_Labor_Supply_and_Gender_Norms.pdf