Do women value improved environmental quality more? Evidence from Indian village councils

In 1993, a Constitutional amendment passed in India mandated that one-third of all positions for chief of local village councils be reserved for women. The bill also devolved more power over expenditures to local village councils.  In their research on the impact of this amendment, Chattopadhyay and Duflo (2004) showed that the gender of the chief influenced policy decisions pertaining to expenditures on local infrastructure such as public buildings, water and roads and funds for welfare recipients. The authors find that villages with female chiefs make higher investments in drinking water. Women tend to be “prime users of domestic water in their key role in food production and women and children are most vulnerable to water-related disasters” (Women 2000 and Beyond, UN Report, 2005). Therefore it is not surprising that women demonstrate strong preferences for improving the quality of drinking water. The findings of the above study provide a context for estimating a gender-specific demand function for environmental quality in India. We use variations in expenditures on improvements in water quality by gender of the village council chief and gender composition of members of the village council to estimate the gender gap in willingness to pay for a cleaner environment at the local level. We are particularly interested in understanding whether a change in the gender of the village chief from male to female after 1993 significantly increases water quality related expenditures.  Information from the Chattopadhyay and Duflo survey serves as the primary data source for our study. A finding of significant differences in environmental preferences by gender could have implications for Indian policy makers in policy targeting and implementation.