Who really makes the decision in the family? Does even one spouse discuss the decision with the other one? Well, the answer may depend on where you are, but Fredrik Carlsson, Haoran He, Peter Martinsson, Ping Qin and Matthias Sutter has some very interesting experimental findings from rural China family samples. In most cases, we can easily say it's the husband. But then again, it depends on the economic status of the family and which one is older:
"This raises the question about spouses' relative influence on joint decisions and the determinants of relative influence. Using a controlled experiment (on inter-temporal choice), we let each spouse first make individual decisions and then make joint decisions with the other spouse. We use a random parameter probit model to measure the relative influence of spouses on joint decisions. In general, husbands have a stronger influence than wives. However, in richer households and when the wife is older than the husband, we find a significantly stronger influence of the wife on joint decisions."
A more interesting result that is related to above is their finding that increasing wealth improves the relative power of women in households regardless of who's older. Although they didn't elaborate on the channels through which this is the case, this results is indeed realtively new and fascinating.
Well, as I mentioned earlier about where you are situated, I know for one that it depends on the prevailing culture or social networks surrounding the family. The authors acknowledged this fact by stating that their results of having majority of the husbands being more influential reflect the traditional Chinese norm that husbands are mainly in charge of household decisions. Again, it's easy to assume initially that the husband really has the stronger influence, particularly when we always say, "It's a man's world out there." But on the part where the older wife in a rich household has more influence, it is yet to be confirmed if this is true in all societies. We're just looking at rural China here.
It may be true in the U.S. particularly if an older woman in a rich household is usually associated with the term "cougar." But seriously speaking. One thing we can get out of Carlsson et al.'s paper is the methodology they used to get these findings. Now we can verify if here in the U.S., cougars are more influential in household decisions.