Consumption, Health, Gender, and Poverty

Standard methods of measuring poverty assume that an individual is poor if he or she lives in a family whose income or consumption lies below an appropriate poverty line. Such methods provide only limited insight into male and female poverty separa...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors:	Case, Anne, Deaton, Angus
Format:	Policy Research Working Paper
Language:	English en_US
Published:	World Bank, Washington, DC 2014
Subjects:	CONSUMPTION PATTERNS HEALTH ASPECTS OF POVERTY GENDER GAP POVERTY INCIDENCE POVERTY MEASUREMENT POVERTY LINE GENDER DISCREPANCIES HOUSEHOLD CONSUMPTION WOMEN'S EMPLOYMENT DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS EXPENDITURE PATTERNS FAMILY INCOME HOUSEHOLD DATA POVERTY & GENDER HEALTH IMPACTS ABORTION ADULT FEMALES ADULT MALE ADULT MALES ADULTS AGE GROUPS AGED ALCOHOL CONSUMPTION EXPENDITURE CONSUMPTION EXPENDITURES DAY CARE DEMOGRAPHIC COMPOSITION DEMOGRAPHIC STRUCTURE DEPRESSION DEVELOPMENT ISSUES DISCRIMINATION ECONOMIES OF SCALE ELDERLY PEOPLE EQUIVALENCE SCALES EXPENDITURE DATA EXPENDITURES FAMILIES FAMILY SIZE FEMALES FOOD CONSUMPTION FOOD EXPENDITURES GENDER GIRLS HEADCOUNT POVERTY RATES HOUSEHOLD CHARACTERISTICS HOUSEHOLD COMPOSITION HOUSEHOLD EXPENDITURE HOUSEHOLD EXPENDITURES HOUSEHOLD INCOME HOUSEHOLD LEVEL HOUSEHOLD MEMBERS HOUSEHOLD RESOURCES HOUSEHOLD SIZE HOUSEHOLDS HOUSING HUMAN DEVELOPMENT HYPERTENSION ILLITERACY INCOME INDIVIDUAL LEVEL ISOLATION LABOR FORCE LIFE EXPECTANCY MALES MEASURED POVERTY MEASURING POVERTY MORTALITY MOTIVATION PARENTS POLICY RESEARCH POOR COUNTRIES POOR HOUSEHOLDS POVERTY COMPARISONS POVERTY LINES POVERTY MEASURE POVERTY MEASURES POVERTY PROFILE POVERTY RATE POVERTY REDUCTION PRIVATE CONSUMPTION PRIVATE GOODS PUBLIC GOODS RURAL SECTOR SEX SHADOW PRICES SIBLINGS WALKING HEALTH IMPACTS ABORTION
Online Access:	http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2003/04/2329618/consumption-health-gender-poverty http://hdl.handle.net/10986/18261

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Summary:	Standard methods of measuring poverty assume that an individual is poor if he or she lives in a family whose income or consumption lies below an appropriate poverty line. Such methods provide only limited insight into male and female poverty separately. Nevertheless, there are reasons why household resources are linked to the gender composition of the household: women's earnings are often lower than men's; families in some countries control their fertility through differential stopping rules; and women live longer than men. It is also possible to link family expenditure patterns to the gender composition of the household, something the authors illustrate using data from India and South Africa. Such a procedure provides useful information on who gets what, but cannot tell us how total resources are allocated between males and females. More can be gleaned from data on consumption by individual household members, and for many goods, collecting such information is good survey practice in any case. Even so, it will be some time before such information can be used routinely to produce estimates of poverty by gender. A more promising approach is likely to come within a broader definition of poverty that includes health (and possibly education) as well as income. The authors discuss recent work on collecting self-reported measures of nonfatal health and argue that such measures are already useful for assessing the relative health status of males and females. The evidence is consistent with non-elderly women generally having poorer health than non-elderly men. The authors emphasize the importance of simultaneously measuring poverty in multiple dimensions. The different components of well-being are correlated, and it is misleading to look at any one in isolation from the others.

Consumption, Health, Gender, and Poverty

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