Looking for Boy-Girl Discrimination in Household Expenditure Data

Abstract

ability to test for discrimination in the allocation of goods between boys and girls is hampered by a lack of data on intrahousehold distribution. analysis presented here allows inferences about intrahousehold allocation to be made from householdlevel expenditure data. For a given level of income, families with children will spend less on goods in order to purchase children's goods. If household purchasing favors boys over girls, smaller expenditures on goods would be made by families with boys as compared with those with girls. A method for determining adult goods is described, and the procedure for detecting gender bias is applied to data from C6te d'lvoire and Thailand. data show no evidence of discriminatio n between boys and girls in C6te d'lvoire, and a small and statistically insignificant bias in favor of boys in Thailand. How commodities are allocated among the members of a household has recently occasioned a good deal of interest. Assessments of poverty and income distribution based on household incomes or expenditures will be misleading if allocation within the household is unequal. position of women and girls has been of particular concern, and there is a considerable amount of empirical evidence, much of it from the Indian subcontinent, that documents discrimination against females (see in particular Bhagwati 1973; Sen 1984; Sen and Sengupta 1983; Miller 1981; Bardhan 1982; and Kynch and Sen 1983; as well as survey papers by Behrman 1987 and Harriss 1987). Much of the evidence is concerned with measurements of nutritional outcomes, mortality, and health status rather than with the direct allocation of goods by gender. difficulty in trying to determine the intrahousehold allocation of goods is that household budget surveys, the obvious source of data, record consumption not of individuals but of households. And while attempts can be made to author is a professor of public affairs and of economics and international affairs at Princeton University and is a consultant to the Population and Human Resources Department of the World Bank. author thanks Dwayne Benjamin who provided for excellent research assistance. He is grateful to him and to members of the Economic Growth Center at Yale University for helpful comments. This is a revised and shortened version of Living Standards Measurement Study Working Paper 39, The Allocation of Goods within the Household: Adults, Children, and Gender, June 1987. results from Thailand were not included in the working paper. © 1989 International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / THE WORLD BANK.