Women’s Financial Autonomy in India: What Does NFHS-5 Tell Us?

Financial autonomy is an important dimension of women’s decision-making and economic independence. This data story uses the NFHS-5 Women’s Individual Recode to examine whether women have money of their own that they alone can decide how to use. The outcome is based on variable s929 and is coded as 0 for no and 1 for yes.

Among 108,785 valid responses, 54,452 women (50.05%) reported having money of their own that they alone could decide how to use, while 54,333 women (49.95%) reported that they did not. The descriptive comparisons show noticeable differences across education, wealth, working status, and place of residence.

While the overall national average sits at a near 50-50 split, a clearer gradient is visible across the wealth index. The share reporting financial autonomy rises steadily across the wealth categories in the descriptive data.

Financial autonomy was reported by 44.38% of women in the poorest group and 46.48% in the poorer group. This metric increases to 49.47% in the middle group, 51.85% in the richer group, and peaks at 60.35% in the richest group. A regression analysis would be required to examine this association after adjusting for other characteristics.

Current working status shows one of the largest descriptive differences in the analysis. The data indicate that securing active employment is heavily associated with a woman's ability to control her own finances.

This represents a substantial difference of 16.33 percentage points between the two groups. The descriptive comparison indicates that a larger share of currently working women report having money they can decide how to use.