Children's Resources in Collective Households: Identification, Estimation, and an Application to Child Poverty in Malawi
Geoffrey R. Dunbar, Arthur Lewbel, Krishna Pendakur
American Economic Review · 2013 · Volume 103 · Issue 1
Abstract
The share of household resources devoted to children is hard to identify because consumption is measured at the household level and goods can be shared. Using semiparametric restrictions on individual preferences within a collective model, we identify how total household resources are divided up among household members by observing how each family member's expenditures on a single private good like clothing vary with income and family size. Using data from Malawi we show how resources devoted to wives and children vary by family size and structure, and we find that standard poverty indices understate the incidence of child poverty. (JEL I31, I32, J12, J13, O12, O15)
Keywords
General Welfare, Measurement and Analysis of Poverty, Marriage, Marital Dissolution, Family Structure, Domestic Abuse, Fertility, Family Planning, Child Care, Children, Youth, Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development, Economic Development: Human Resources, Human Development, Income Distribution, Migration
Enable JavaScript for citation tools and additional paper interactions.