IFPRI Report
Volume 19, Number 2
June 1997
New Book Examines How Households Assign Resources to Members
In a new volume published jointly by IFPRI and the Johns Hopkins University Press, economists, demographers, sociologists, and anthropologists collaborate in the study of how resources are allocated within households in developing countries and why it matters for policymakers. Intrahousehold Resource Allocation in Developing Countries: Models, Methods, and Policy, edited by Lawrence Haddad, John Hoddinott, and Harold Alderman, examines the many complex factors that influence decisions made by families and households about how they spend time, money, and other resources. It shows that by ignoring these factors, policymakers seeking to improve the lives of the poor and hungry can doom themselves to failure.In the past two decades, several theories of household decisionmaking have been posited, and the book seeks to clarify which are most useful for studying intrahousehold allocation in developing countries. Some contributors argue that it is most useful to treat the household as a single decisionmaker that pools all of its resources and acts for the benefit of all of its members. Others focus on how the sometimes conflicting preferences of individuals within the household are combined in various ways to reach a collective choice. The authors counsel that both broad approaches have merit and should be considered in policy analysis. Whereas the first model has much to offer policymakers and is easier to work with, the second is more likely to reflect reality.
A number of the book's contributors draw on empirical evidence to examine these theoretical issues, showing that household decisionmaking is based on wide-ranging factors, including cultural conventions regarding the status of males and females, adults and children. For example, when women have control over resources, they tend to use them differently than men do, with differing results for the welfare of the household. One chapter points out that even the actions of family members living outside the household can have a strong influence on the household's welfare.
These issues have profound implications for policy. Policymakers typically assume that by alleviating poverty for the individual, they can alleviate poverty for the household, or that individual poverty can be reduced without taking the actions of other household members into account. The authors show that these assumptions are erroneous. For example, if a school meals program is targeted to undernourished children, a household may respond by reducing the amount of food the child receives at home and increasing the amount of food consumed by other household members. A more complete understanding of intrahousehold behavior can increase the likelihood that policies will reach the people they are intended to affect, leading to better policies in areas such as food production and consumption, nutrition, natural resource management, and fertility.
Intrahousehold Resource Allocation in Developing Countries: Models, Methods, and Policy, edited by Lawrence Haddad, John Hoddinott, and Harold Alderman, is available from the Johns Hopkins University Press, 2715 North Charles Street, Baltimore, Maryland, 21218-4319 (telephone: 1-800-537-5487 or 1-410-516-6957). The price is US$55. (ISBN 0-8018-5572-1, 384 pp.)
