IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/wbrobs/v10y1995i1p1-19.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Unitary versus Collective Models of the Household: Is It Time to Shift the Burden of Proof?

Author

Listed:
  • Alderman, Harold, et al

Abstract

Most development objectives focus on the well-being of individuals. Policies are targeted to increase the percentage of individuals who avoid poverty, who can read, who are free from hunger and illness, or who can find gainful employment. Individual welfare, however, is based in large part on a complex set of interactions among family members. Until recently most policy analyses implicitly viewed the household as having only one set of preferences. This assumption has been a powerful tool for understanding household behavior, such as the distribution of tasks and goods. But a growing body of evidence suggests that this view is an expedience that comes at considerable, and possibly avoidable, cost. The article argues that more effective policy instruments will emerge from analyzing the processes by which households balance the diverse interests of their members. Coauthors are Pierre-Andre Chiappori, Lawrence Haddad, John Hoddinott, and Ravi Kanbur. Copyright 1995 by Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Alderman, Harold, et al, 1995. "Unitary versus Collective Models of the Household: Is It Time to Shift the Burden of Proof?," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 10(1), pages 1-19, February.
  • Handle: RePEc:oup:wbrobs:v:10:y:1995:i:1:p:1-19
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:wbrobs:v:10:y:1995:i:1:p:1-19. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/wrldbus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.