Intrahousehold Distribution and Poverty: Evidence from Côte dIvoire

Poverty measures in developing countries often ignore the distribution of resources within families and the gains from joint consumption. In this paper, we estimate the allocation process and adult economies of scale in households from Côte d'Ivoire using a collective model of household consumption. Identification relies on the observation of adult-specific goods, as in the Rothbarth method, and a joint estimation on couples and singles. Results show that children's shares are small and decline quickly with household size. It results that child poverty, measured on the basis of individual allocations within families, is much larger than in traditional measures ignoring intrahousehold inequality. Adult poverty is smaller because parents are highly compensated by the scale economies due to joint consumption