Intrahousehold Consumption Inequality, Economies of Scale, Indifference Scales, and Family Structure

This study presents a novel approach to estimating resource shares, economies of scale among household members, focusing primarily on inequality between cowives in bigamous households in Burkina Faso. The findings indicate that husbands receive a larger portion of the household’s total expenditures than their wives and children across household types. Next, I find that senior wives receive higher share of household total expenditure compared with junior wives. Furthermore, the results show that parents in monogamous households experience greater economies of scale than those in bigamous households. Finally, the estimated indifference scales indicate that family size affects wellbeing differently across individuals and living arrangements.