Abstract
Anti-poverty policies often aim to reach poor individuals by targeting poor households. However, intra-household inequality may mean many poor individuals reside in non-poor households. Using Bangladeshi data, we first show that undernourished individuals are spread across the household per-capita expenditure distribution. We then quantify the extent of food and total consumption inequality within families. Based on a collective model, we develop a new methodology to compute individual-level poverty rates that account for intra-household inequality. We show that women, children, and the elderly face significant probabilities of living in poverty even in households with per-capita expenditure above the poverty threshold.
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