Pauvreté, dimension des ménages et genre au Burkina Faso

While some analyses, based on a per capita welfare approach, assert the existence of an inverse relationship between the poverty and the household size in developing countries, the present research, supported by data from the Burkina Faso household survey of 1994-95, suggests a fragile correlation. Firstly, one shows that Foster-Greer-Thorbecke's poverty index increase with the household size when the elasticity of the standard of living with respect to household size takes a critical value. Secondly, the Engel's curve approach allows to estimate the elasticity size at about 0,58. Thirdly, a such scale of equivalence seems appropriated to predict the child nutritional status, especially stunting and wasting. Fourthly, the analysis shows that a value of the elasticity size less than 1 has important consequences as for the nature of the relationship between poverty and gender. On the one hand, the poverty index increase in households managed by women, and, on the other hand, the probability of poverty in these last is greater when one controls by some parameters linked to the household head or to the group to which it belongs. Such results call a certain prudence as for alternative methodological choice concerning the measure of welfare, to the extent of they are susceptible to weaken the robustness of specific policies aiming to reduce the poverty. (Full text in French)