The policy failures associated with inappropriate acceptance of unitary models of household behavior are more serious than those associated with inappropriate acceptance of collective models, contend the authors. They support this claim with illustrations. Consider, for example, the effect of...

Until recently, most economists viewed the household as a collection of individuals who behave as if in agreement on how best to combine time and goods (purchased or produced at home) to produce commodities that maximize some common welfare index. This model has been extended far beyond standard...

The object of this paper has been, first to develop a framework for upper-limit indicator targeting, and to illustrate it for age based targeting of nutrition interventions using data from the Philippines. Second, the authors provide quantitative estimates of the value of individual level...

In this report the authors develop a framework for assessing the consequences of ignoring intrahousehold inequality in the measurement and analysis of poverty and inequality. They apply this framework to data for the Philippines and conclude that : 1) the result of neglecting intrahousehold...

Is there a"Kuznets curve"for intra household inequality ? Does intra household inequality first increase, peak, and then decrease as the household becomes better off? The authors found both theoretical and tentative empirical support for this hypothesis. The policy significance of this finding...

In many parts of the world, resources within a household are apparently not distributed according to need. Using a model of intrahousehold bargaining, this paper first tries to answer the question: As households become better off, does intrahousehold inequality increase or decrease? It finds...

The two literatures on targeting and on intrahousehold inequality have developed rapidly over the past 15 years, but largely independent of each other. The literature on targeting concerns itself with the design of tax and transfer programs for poverty alleviation in the presence of limited...

Data from three rounds of nationally representative health surveys in India are used to assess the impact of selective mortality on children’s anthropometrics. The nutritional status of the child population was simulated under the counterfactual scenario that all children who died in the first...

The paper provides an up-to date and selective review of the literature on how social safety nets contribute to growth. The evidence is carefully chosen to show how safety nets have the potential to overcome constraints on growth linked to market failures, and is organized into 4 distinct...

This essay discusses practical issues confronted when conducting surveys as well as designing appropriate field trials. First, it looks at the challenge of ensuring transparency while maintaining confidentiality. Second, it explores the role of trust in light of asymmetric information held by...