Women’s Autonomy in Household Purchasing Decision Making in Sri Lanka: An Application of Multivariate Baseline-Category Logit Model

Abstract

As many researches on gender and household purchasing decision making are sociological as well as descriptive, this attempt tries to fill the gap with applying of statistical model in to the same context. This is basically an inductive approach that generates data, applies joint modeling and moves forward in sociological interpretation. The data has been generated in an I sland-wide survey consisting 28,800 household units in Sri Lanka in 2016. Generalized linear mixed approach was applied to baseline-category logit models to identify the factors associated with women’s autonomy in decision making on daily household purchases and major household purchases. This research comes up to the conclusions that women’s age, education status of the women and spouses, number of children, residence area and economic status in the family emerged as important factors associated with women’s autonomy in decision making. Increased age, well paid employment and having many living children are all positively associated with women’s autonomy in decision making in both daily household purchases and major household purchases. Women from rural and estate areas are less likely be autonomous in decision making than the women from urban areas. Highly educated women are more likely to make decisions jointly while the women who less attended formal education are further likely to make decisions unaccompanied .