IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/erg/wpaper/512.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Gender Poverty in Tunisia: Is there A Feminization Issue?

Author

Listed:
  • Sami Bibi

    (Department of Economics, University of Laval, Quebec, Canada.)

  • Rim Chatti

Abstract

This paper investigates the association between gender and poverty in Tunisia based upon an empirical analysis of 1990 and 2000 household surveys. It also tests whether there is a widespread feminization of poverty. To achieve these goals, the paper suggests a theoretically sound method to compute expenditure-based incidence of poverty and tests for differences in headcount ratio between female- and male-headed households for a given period and whether this difference is increasing over time. Stochastic dominance tests are also performed to avoid arbitrary choices of poverty lines and indices. The results suggest that although the female headed households would be subjected unequal treatment in the labor market, they are not poorer than their male counterpart as they live with more active persons. However, as we increase the poverty line, the poverty difference between female and male headed households rises to the detriment of female-headed households and becomes statistically significant. But what is more disquieting is that this difference will increase over time due to the fall in both the level and the returns of the female assets.

Suggested Citation

  • Sami Bibi & Rim Chatti, 2010. "Gender Poverty in Tunisia: Is there A Feminization Issue?," Working Papers 512, Economic Research Forum, revised 03 Jan 2010.
    • Handle: RePEc:erg:wpaper:512
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://erf.org.eg/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/512.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://bit.ly/2mhQVDu
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Victor R. Fuchs, 1986. "The Feminization of Poverty?," NBER Working Papers 1934, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Medeiros, Marcelo & Costa, Joana, 2008. "Is There a Feminization of Poverty in Latin America?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 115-127, January.
    3. Oaxaca, Ronald, 1973. "Male-Female Wage Differentials in Urban Labor Markets," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 14(3), pages 693-709, October.
    4. Zheng, Buhong, 1997. "Aggregate Poverty Measures," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 11(2), pages 123-162, June.
    5. Alan S. Blinder, 1973. "Wage Discrimination: Reduced Form and Structural Estimates," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 8(4), pages 436-455.
    6. Russell Davidson & Jean-Yves Duclos, 2000. "Statistical Inference for Stochastic Dominance and for the Measurement of Poverty and Inequality," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 68(6), pages 1435-1464, November.
    7. Daniel T. Slesnick, 1998. "Empirical Approaches to the Measurement of Welfare," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 36(4), pages 2108-2165, December.
    8. Buhong Zheng, 1997. "Aggregate Poverty Measures," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 11(2), pages 123-162, June.
    9. Joan R. Rodgers, 1991. "Female-Headed Families: Why Are They So Poor?," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_45, Levy Economics Institute.
    10. Ravallion, M., 1998. "Poverty Lines in Theory and Practice," Papers 133, World Bank - Living Standards Measurement.
    11. Buvinic, Mayra & Gupta, Geeta Rao, 1997. "Female-Headed Households and Female-Maintained Families: Are They Worth Targeting to Reduce Poverty in Developing Countries?," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 45(2), pages 259-280, January.
    12. Sen, Amartya K, 1976. "Poverty: An Ordinal Approach to Measurement," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 44(2), pages 219-231, March.
    13. Peragine, Vitorocco, 1999. "The Distribution and Redistribution of Opportunity," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 13(1), pages 37-69, February.
    14. Takayama, Noriyuki, 1979. "Poverty, Income Inequality, and Their Measures: Professor Sen's Axiomatic Approach Reconsidered," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 47(3), pages 747-759, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Shireen AlAzzawi, 2015. "Is there Feminization of Poverty in Egypt?," Working Papers 926, Economic Research Forum, revised Jul 2015.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Stephen P. Jenkins & John Micklewright, 2007. "New Directions in the Analysis of Inequality and Poverty," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 700, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    2. Jean–Yves Duclos & Phillipe Grégoire, 2002. "Absolute and Relative Deprivation and the Measurement of Poverty," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 48(4), pages 471-492, December.
    3. Higgins, Sean & Lustig, Nora, 2016. "Can a poverty-reducing and progressive tax and transfer system hurt the poor?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 63-75.
    4. François Bourguignon & Satya R. Chakravarty, 2019. "The Measurement of Multidimensional Poverty," Themes in Economics, in: Satya R. Chakravarty (ed.), Poverty, Social Exclusion and Stochastic Dominance, pages 83-107, Springer.
    5. Anglade, Boaz & Useche, Pilar & Deere, Carmen Diana, 2017. "Decomposing the Gender Wealth Gap in Ecuador," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 19-31.
    6. Gordon Anderson, 2003. "Poverty in America 1970-1990: who did gain ground? An application of stochastic dominance criteria employing simultaneous inequality tests in a partial panel," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(6), pages 621-640.
    7. Decerf,Benoit Marie A & Ferrando,Mery & Quinn,Natalie N., 2021. "Global Income Poverty Measurement with Preference Heterogeneity : Theory and Application," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9844, The World Bank.
    8. LABAR, Kelly & BRESSON, Florent, 2011. "A multidimensional analysis of poverty in China from 1991 to 2006," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 646-668.
    9. James E. Foster & Joel Greer & Erik Thorbecke, 2010. "The Foster-Greer-Thorbecke (FGT) Poverty Measures: Twenty-Five Years Later," Working Papers 2010-14, The George Washington University, Institute for International Economic Policy.
    10. Ali Abdel Gadir Ali, "undated". "Can the Sudan Reduce Poverty by Half by the Year 2015?," API-Working Paper Series 0304, Arab Planning Institute - Kuwait, Information Center.
    11. Sreenivasan Subramanian, 2004. "Indicators of Inequality and Poverty," WIDER Working Paper Series RP2004-25, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    12. Coral Río & Carlos Gradín & Olga Cantó, 2011. "The measurement of gender wage discrimination: the distributional approach revisited," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 9(1), pages 57-86, March.
    13. Ottó Hajdu, 2021. "A New Generalized Variance Approach for Measuring Multidimensional Inequality and Poverty," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 158(3), pages 839-861, December.
    14. Shireen AlAzzawi, 2015. "Endowments or Discrimination? Determinants of Household Poverty in Egypt," Working Papers 931, Economic Research Forum, revised Aug 2015.
    15. Bibi, Sami & Duclos, Jean-Yves, 2007. "Equity and policy effectiveness with imperfect targeting," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(1), pages 109-140, May.
    16. Sean Higgins & Nora Lustig, 2015. "Can Poverty-Reducing and Progressive Tax and Transfer System Hurt the Poor?," Commitment to Equity (CEQ) Working Paper Series 1333, Tulane University, Department of Economics.
    17. Sami Bibi, 2006. "Growth with Equity is Better for the Poor," Cahiers de recherche 0640, CIRPEE.
    18. Sami Bibi & Jean-Yves Duclos, 2007. "Poverty-decreasing indirect tax reforms: Evidence from Tunisia," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 14(2), pages 165-190, April.
    19. Shireen AlAzzawi, 2015. "Is there Feminization of Poverty in Egypt?," Working Papers 926, Economic Research Forum, revised Jul 2015.
    20. Buhong Zheng, 2021. "Stochastic dominance and decomposable measures of inequality and poverty," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 23(2), pages 228-247, April.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:erg:wpaper:512. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 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: Sherine Ghoneim (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/erfaceg.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.