Household Structure and Poverty: What are the Connections?

Abstract

Abstract Improved living standards have usually been associated with a tendency towards smaller and less complex households. Yet, growing numbers of female-headed households, which also tend to be smaller and less complex, have often been associated with increasing rates of poverty among women and children. In the first instance, economic trends are viewed as the determinants of household structure while, in the second case, changes in household structure are seen as the cause of increasing poverty. These trends appear contradictory but are not. The problem is that the household unit is used as the basis for measuring living standards, poverty, and inequality, despite our fundamental interest in the fate of individuals. Indeed, given the way data are collected, we have no way of knowing how individual women and children have fared within different types of households but only that, when they are observed separately in their own households, women and children in female-headed households often appear disadvantaged (particularly when assessed on the basis of income) relative to those in male-headed households.