| Abstract
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In this dissertation, I determine how factors outside a household's control affect the allocation of resources within a household. In particular, I examine the effects of the availability of potential spouses at the time of marriage in China, and the availability of credit in Bangladesh. In the first chapter, I examine how fertility fluctuations in China led to imbalanced sex ratios at marriage. Fertility fluctuated as a result of the Great Famine and the Cultural Revolution, as well as government policies. As Chinese women marry men several years older, these fertility changes affected sex ratios at marriage. The distribution in spousal age differences in the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) is used to estimate the probability of marrying someone of a given age. The marriage market sex ratio is defined as the ratio between the weighted averages of the number of men available for marriage and the number of women one is competing with. This ratio takes into account the degree to which an individual is likely to substitute across different ages. As women become scarcer in the marriage market, they marry older and taller men. They also have fewer children and invest more in their children's health. In the second chapter, I study the role of credit in rural Bangladesh in influencing household expenditures. The analysis is unique in that the impact of credit from all loan sources is examined, rather than only from microcredit. Using household survey panel data, I apply first differencing and instrumental variables, exploiting variation in gender-specific credit availability at the village level to address selection bias issues. I find that while loans borrowed by men and women similarly influence total expenditures, the gender of the borrower affects what is spent on specific items. Female borrowing leads to greater spending on clothing, medicine, soap, and fine rice. In contrast, male borrowing results in greater spending on transportation, kerosene, beef, and tea. These results suggest a woman's bargaining power increases when she takes out a loan instead of when her husband does so.
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