Women Left Behind? : Poverty and Headship in Africa
This paper is motivated by two stylized facts about poverty in Africa: female-headed households tend to be poorer, and poverty has been falling in the aggregate since the 1990s. These facts raise two questions: How have female-headed households fa...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2015
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2015/06/24688477/women-left-behind-poverty-headship-africa http://hdl.handle.net/10986/22212 |
| Summary: | This paper is motivated by two stylized
facts about poverty in Africa: female-headed households tend
to be poorer, and poverty has been falling in the aggregate
since the 1990s. These facts raise two questions: How have
female-headed households fared? And what role have they
played in Africas impressive recent aggregate growth and
poverty reduction? Using data covering the entire region,
the paper reexamines the current prevalence and
characteristics of female-headed households, and asks
whether their prevalence has been rising over time, what
factors have been associated with such changes since the
mid-1990s, and whether poverty has fallen
equi-proportionately for male- and female-headed households.
Rising gross domestic product has dampened rising female
headship. However, other subtle transformations occurring
across Africa—changes in marriage behavior, family
formation, health, and education—have put upward pressure on
female headship, with the result that the share of
female-headed households has been growing. This has been
happening alongside declining aggregate poverty incidence.
However, rather than being left behind, female-headed
households have generally seen faster poverty reduction. As
a whole, this group has contributed almost as much to the
reduction in poverty as male-headed households, despite the
smaller share of female-headed households in the population. |
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