Three essays on intra-household inequality and child welfare

This thesis consists of three essays that investigate inequality within the household with a particular focus on the effects of intra-household resource allocation and informal child fostering on the welfare of children. The first essay estimates individual resource shares within Ghanaian households using a modern household collective model. Our findings show that mothers, along with their children, tend to be more vulnerable to poverty than fathers because mothers tend to bear most of the cost of having children. Applying the same model to a panel data set of households, the second chapter conducts a comparative study of children's resource shares between male-headed and female-headed households in Jamaica. The results indicate that children tend to be allocated a higher share of resources in female-headed households and hence may not be necessarily poorer in terms of resource shares to children in male-headed households. The final essay investigates the effects of child fostering on two educational outcomes of children in Jamaica - school attendance and the number of years of schooling. We find that being a foster child in itself has a negative impact on the number of schooling years a child accumulates but has no significant effect on school attendance

Diamonds in the Rough? Repurposing Multi-Topic Surveys to Estimate Individual-Level Consumption Poverty

Traditional per capita measures of poverty assign the same poverty status to individuals living in the same household and overlook differences in living standards within households. There has been a long-standing need for a tool that enables poverty measurement at the individual level, while avoiding overly complex estimation techniques and, if possible, using readily available household survey data. An ordinary least squares–based strategy was recently introduced to estimate individual resource shares. This paper presents the theory behind this approach in an accessible fashion for those interested in individual-level consumption poverty measurement using existing household survey data. The strategy’s assumptions are compared with the assumptions of the prevailing per capita approach to deriving poverty estimates. The empirical analysis presents competing individual-level poverty estimates in four diverse countries under the individual resource shares strategy versus the per capita approach. The results suggest that poverty is underestimated under the per capita approach. There is further evidence that women may be poorer than men, and that children and the elderly are disproportionately affected by poverty. However, the pursuit of the individual resource shares approach reveals cross-country heterogeneity in the extent of increase in headcount poverty estimates, and in the direction of change in headcount poverty estimates for men and women. The paper concludes with suggestions for further methodological research in this area

Factors Associated With Being Overweight or Obese in Suriname

Objective: To identify the socio-demographic risk factors that are associated with adult Body Mass Index.Methods: We apply probit and ordinal probit models to a sample of 3,803 adults aged 20 and above from the 2016/17 round of the Suriname Survey of Living Conditions.Results: Women, the elderly, and couples who are either married and/or living together are more likely to be obese or overweight. This is also true for individuals who have chronic illnesses. We also find that individuals who engage in a sport or in other forms of exercise, even if modest, have lower odds of being overweight or obese. Interestingly, our findings indicate that individuals who benefit from government social safety net programs are less likely to be associated with being overweight or obese.Conclusion: Obesity could become a serious public health issue if not addressed appropriately. Policymakers should promptly develop a national strategy to help health care systems cope with the outcomes of obesity and to tackle the risk factors that have the greatest impacts on individual Body Mass Index

Children’s Resource Shares: Male Versus Female-Headed Households

This is a comparative study of children’s resource shares in male-headed and female-headed households. To this end we estimate a household collective model using a rotating panel of households from the Jamaican Survey of Living Conditions over a period of 21 years (1990–2010). We find that the gender of the household head is important in determining individual resource shares within the household. Our results also indicate that children receive substantially larger resource shares in female-headed households than in male-headed ones and hence children who live in relatively poor female-headed households are not necessarily worse off. Additionally, the effects of household characteristics on the shares of children are shown to vary considerably based on the gender of the household head

Child fostering and the educational outcomes of Jamaican children

The practice of informal fostering is prevalent in many developing regions of the world. Our paper investigates the effects of this practice on school attendance in Jamaica using a rotating panel data set of children constructed from the 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 rounds of the Jamaican Survey of Living Conditions. Using panel data allows us to deal more effectively with the problem of endogeneity by being able to control for household and child fixed effects. Our findings indicate that the effect of fostering on school attendance depends on whether the household is a beneficiary of PATH, a conditional cash transfer programme instituted by the Government of Jamaica in 2001. We find that a foster child that lives within a non-PATH household is associated with being less likely to be absent from school than a foster child who lives in a household that benefits from PATH. This is true especially for foster girls. Although the PATH programme generally appears to be linked to the improvement in school attendance of Jamaican children, the benefits of the programme may be skewed towards biological children