IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/
MyIDEAS: Log in (now much improved!) to save this article

Targeting and child poverty

Author Info

Listed author(s):
  • Olivier Bargain
  • Olivier Donni

    ()

Abstract

We examine the relative merits of targeting children within the household through price subsidies and cash transfers. To do so, we model the behavior of a household composed of one adult and one child. We then show that ‘favorable’ distortions from price subsidies may allow redistributing toward the child and then derive the conditions under which this redistributive scheme is more efficient than cash transfers. The framework is extended to account for possible paternalistic preferences of the social planner and for households composed of two adults with different preferences. Applied to a continuum of households, our approach is extended to the problem of child poverty alleviation. In contrast to the traditional view, we show that well-chosen subsidies may be more cost effective than cash transfers in reducing child poverty. Copyright Springer-Verlag 2012

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.

File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s00355-011-0556-z
Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.

Article provided by Springer & The Society for Social Choice and Welfare in its journal Social Choice and Welfare.

Volume (Year): 39 (2012)
Issue (Month): 4 (October)
Pages: 783-808

as
in new window

Handle: RePEc:spr:sochwe:v:39:y:2012:i:4:p:783-808
DOI: 10.1007/s00355-011-0556-z
Contact details of provider: Web page: http://www.springer.com

Web page: http://www.unicaen.fr/recherche/mrsh/scw/

More information through EDIRC

Order Information: Web: http://www.springer.com/economics/economic+theory/journal/355

Keywords:

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:
  • D13 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Production and Intrahouse Allocation
  • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
  • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
  • H21 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Efficiency; Optimal Taxation
  • H31 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - Household

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:

as
in new window


  1. Becker, Gary S, 1974. "A Theory of Social Interactions," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(6), pages 1063-1093, Nov.-Dec..
  2. Cremer, Helmuth & Pestieau, Pierre, 2001. "Non-linear taxation of bequests, equal sharing rules and the tradeoff between intra- and inter-family inequalities," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(1), pages 35-53, January.
  3. Anyck Dauphin & Abdel‐Rahmen El Lahga & Bernard Fortin & Guy Lacroix, 2011. "Are Children Decision‐Makers within the Household?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 121(553), pages 871-903, 06.
  4. M. Browning & P. A. Chiappori, 1998. "Efficient Intra-Household Allocations: A General Characterization and Empirical Tests," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 66(6), pages 1241-1278, November.
  5. Haddad, Lawrence & Kanbur, Ravi, 1992. "Intrahousehold inequality and the theory of targeting," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 36(2-3), pages 372-378, April.
  6. Cigno, Alessandro & Luporini, Annalisa & Pettini, Anna, 2003. "Transfers to families with children as a principal-agent problem," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(5-6), pages 1165-1177, May.
  7. Besley, Timothy, 1988. "A simple model for merit good arguments," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 371-383, April.
  8. Manser, Marilyn & Brown, Murray, 1980. "Marriage and Household Decision-Making: A Bargaining Analysis," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 21(1), pages 31-44, February.
  9. FranÚois Bourguignon, 1999. "The cost of children: May the collective approach to household behavior help?," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 12(4), pages 503-521.
  10. Sonia Bhalotra & Cliff Attfield, 1998. "Intrahousehold resource allocation in rural Pakistan: a semiparametric analysis," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 13(5), pages 463-480.
  11. Deaton, Angus, 1979. "Optimally uniform commodity taxes," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 2(4), pages 357-361.
  12. Gronau, Reuben, 1991. "The Intrafamily Allocation of Goods--How to Separate the Adult from the Child," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 9(3), pages 207-235, July.
  13. Janet Currie & Firouz Gahvari, 2008. "Transfers in Cash and In-Kind: Theory Meets the Data," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 46(2), pages 333-383, June.
  14. Geoffrey R. Dunbar & Arthur Lewbel & Krishna Pendakur, 2013. "Children's Resources in Collective Households: Identification, Estimation, and an Application to Child Poverty in Malawi," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(1), pages 438-471, February.
  15. Richard Dickens & David T Ellwood, 2003. "Child Poverty in Britain and the United States," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 113(488), pages 219-239, 06.
  16. Deaton,Angus & Muellbauer,John, 1980. "Economics and Consumer Behavior," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521296762, November.
  17. Besley, Timothy J & Kanbur, S M Ravi, 1988. "Food Subsidies and Poverty Alleviation," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 98(392), pages 701-719, September.
  18. Besley, Timothy, 1990. "Means Testing versus Universal Provision in Poverty Alleviation Programmes," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 57(225), pages 119-129, February.
  19. Olivier Donni, 2009. "A Simple Approach to Investigate Intrahousehold Allocation of Private and Public Goods," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 91(3), pages 617-628, August.
  20. Edmonds, Eric, 2002. "Reconsidering the labeling effect for child benefits: evidence from a transition economy," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 76(3), pages 303-309, August.
  21. Peter Kooreman, 2000. "The Labeling Effect of a Child Benefit System," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(3), pages 571-583, June.
  22. Christiansen, Vidar, 1983. " Some Important Properties of the Social Marginal Utility of Income," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 85(3), pages 359-371.
  23. McElroy, Marjorie B & Horney, Mary Jean, 1981. "Nash-Bargained Household Decisions: Toward a Generalization of the Theory of Demand," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 22(2), pages 333-349, June.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Blog mentions

As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
  1. Transfers to mothers may hurt children
    by Economic Logician in Economic Logic on 2011-05-19 14:39:00
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
as
in new window


Cited by:

  1. Bargain, Olivier & Donni, Olivier & Kwenda, Prudence, 2014. "Intrahousehold distribution and poverty: Evidence from Côte d'Ivoire," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 262-276.
  2. Bargain, Olivier & Donni, Olivier, 2009. "The Measurement of Child Costs: A Rothbarth-Type Method Consistent with Scale Economies," IZA Discussion Papers 4654, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  3. Olivier Bargain & Olivier Donni, 2014. "Optimal Commodity Taxation and Redistribution within Households," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 81(321), pages 48-62, 01.
  4. Jean-paul Chavas & Martina Menon & Elisa Pagani & Federico Perali, 2015. "Collective Household Welfare and Intra-household Inequality," Working Papers 13/2015, University of Verona, Department of Economics.
  5. BARGAIN Olivier & DONNI Olivier, 2010. "The Measurement of Child Costs: A Rothbarth-Type Method Consistent with Scale Economies and Parents? Bargaining," LISER Working Paper Series 2010-30, LISER.

This item is featured on the following reading lists or Wikipedia pages:

  1. Economic Logic blog

Access and download statistics

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:sochwe:v:39:y:2012:i:4:p:783-808. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Sonal Shukla)

or (Rebekah McClure)

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.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with 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 profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

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

This information is provided to you by IDEAS at the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis using RePEc data.