Children's Resources in Collective Households: Identification, Estimation, and an Application to Child Poverty in Malawi | Zendy

Geoffrey R. Dunbar | Zendy; Arthur Lewbel | Zendy; Krishna Pendakur | Zendy

Open Access

Children's Resources in Collective Households: Identification, Estimation, and an Application to Child Poverty in Malawi

Author(s) -

Geoffrey R. Dunbar,

Arthur Lewbel,

Krishna Pendakur

Publication year - 2013

Publication title -

american economic review

Language(s) - English

Resource type - Journals

SCImago Journal Rank - 16.936

H-Index - 297

eISSN - 1944-7981

pISSN - 0002-8282

DOI - 10.1257/aer.103.1.438

Subject(s) - poverty , economics , clothing , estimation , consumption (sociology) , identification (biology) , household income , demographic economics , private good , engel curve , labour economics , public economics , economic growth , geography , public good , microeconomics , sociology , social science , botany , management , archaeology , biology , aggregate expenditure

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)

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