IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/rjapxx/v16y2011i2p143-162.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Intra-household income inequality and poverty in a small developing economy

Author

Listed:
  • Sunil Kumar
  • Renuka Mahadevan

Abstract

Ignoring consumption inequality between individuals within a household is shown to not only underestimate the Gini coefficient and poverty measures but these vary considerably over different income groups even in a small island state like Fiji. Interestingly, the Kuznets curve for intra-household inequality is absent and to our knowledge the paper provides the first attempt in determining the factors that influence intra-household inequality. It was found that variation in the age of family members only affected inequality in low-expenditure groups while total assets affected inequality in the mid-level-expenditure group. Age variations arise due to the existence of intergenerational family structure among the poorer households and strong affinity towards asset accumulation among the middle class could have harmful effects on the development of children and the welfare of the weaker members within such families. These intra-family distributional problems can be addressed through targeted redistributive policies to provide additional resources and enhance family cohesion.

Suggested Citation

  • Sunil Kumar & Renuka Mahadevan, 2011. "Intra-household income inequality and poverty in a small developing economy," Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(2), pages 143-162.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:rjapxx:v:16:y:2011:i:2:p:143-162
    DOI: 10.1080/13547860.2011.564747
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13547860.2011.564747
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/13547860.2011.564747?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jeremy Lise & Shannon Seitz, 2011. "Consumption Inequality and Intra-household Allocations," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 78(1), pages 328-355.
    2. Sunil Kumar & Renuka Mahadevan, 2008. "Construction of An Adult Equivalence Index to Measure Intra-household Inequality and Poverty: Case Study," Discussion Papers Series 363, School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia.
    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. Hanrui Jia & Peng Zhan, 2021. "Intra‐family Income Redistribution and Its Dynamic Changes among the Elderly in China: 2002–2018," China & World Economy, Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, vol. 29(5), pages 84-104, September.

    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. Eugene Choo & Shannon Seitz & Aloysius Siow, 2008. "The Collective Marriage Matching Model: Identification, Estimation and Testing," Working Papers tecipa-340, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    2. Greg Kaplan, 2012. "Moving Back Home: Insurance against Labor Market Risk," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 120(3), pages 446-512.
    3. Xiangdan Piao, 2021. "Marriage Stability and Private Versus Shared Expenditures Within Families: Evidence from Japanese Families," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 153(2), pages 533-559, January.
    4. Guler, Bulent & Guvenen, Fatih & Violante, Giovanni L., 2012. "Joint-search theory: New opportunities and new frictions," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(4), pages 352-369.
    5. André de Palma & Nathalie Picard & Ignacio Inoa, 2014. "Discrete choice decision-making with multiple decision-makers within the household," Chapters, in: Stephane Hess & Andrew Daly (ed.), Handbook of Choice Modelling, chapter 16, pages 363-382, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    6. Olivier Bargain & Guy Lacroix & Luca Tiberti, 2021. "Intrahousehold Resource Allocation and Individual Poverty: Assessing Collective Model Predictions against Direct Evidence on Sharing," Working Papers hal-03432676, HAL.
    7. Couprie, Hélène & Peluso, Eugenio & Trannoy, Alain, 2010. "Is power more evenly balanced in poor households?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(7-8), pages 493-507, August.
    8. Xiangdan Piao & Xinxin Ma & Chi Zhang & Shunsuke Managi, 2020. "Impact of Gaps in the Educational Levels between Married Partners on Health and a Sustainable Lifestyle: Evidence from 32 Countries," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(11), pages 1-20, June.
    9. Lewbel, Arthur & Pendakur, Krishna, 2008. "Estimation of collective household models with Engel curves," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 147(2), pages 350-358, December.
    10. Nicolas Frémeaux & Arnaud Lefranc, 2020. "Assortative Mating and Earnings Inequality in France," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 66(4), pages 757-783, December.
    11. André de Palma & Nathalie Picard & Robin Lindsey, 2024. "Activity and transportation decisions within households," Chapters, in: Stephane Hess & Andrew Daly (ed.), Handbook of Choice Modelling, chapter 16, pages 426-451, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    12. Regan, Mark & Kakoulidou, Theano, 2022. "How important are the unit of analysis and equivalence scales when measuring income poverty and inequality? Evidence from Ireland," Papers WP721, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).
    13. Jan-Maarten van Sonsbeek & j.m.van.sonsbeek@vu.nl, 2011. "Micro simulations on the effects of ageing-related policy measures: The Social Affairs Department of the Netherlands Ageing and Pensions Model," International Journal of Microsimulation, International Microsimulation Association, vol. 4(1), pages 72-99.
    14. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/4u07fqmc7q90d9u66sk1a7qgko is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Laurens Cherchye & Thomas Demuynck & Bram De Rock & Frederic Vermeulen, 2017. "Household Consumption When the Marriage Is Stable," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(6), pages 1507-1534, June.
    16. Brown, Caitlin & Calvi, Rossella & Penglase, Jacob, 2021. "Sharing the pie: An analysis of undernutrition and individual consumption in Bangladesh," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 200(C).
    17. Stimpfle, Alexander & Stadelmann, David, 2016. "Marriage Age Affects Educational Gender Inequality: International Evidence," VfS Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change 145492, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    18. Lucia Mangiavacchi & Luca Piccoli, 2009. "Child welfare and intra-household inequality in Albania," Working Papers 149, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    19. Paula A. Calvo & Ilse Lindenlaub & Ana Reynoso, 2021. "Marriage Market and Labor Market Sorting," NBER Working Papers 28883, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Olivier Bargain, 2017. "Welfare analysis and redistributive policies," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 15(4), pages 393-419, December.
    21. Bargain, Olivier & Lacroix, Guy & Tiberti, Luca, 2018. "Validating the Collective Model of Household Consumption Using Direct Evidence on Sharing," IZA Discussion Papers 11653, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    More about this item

    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:taf:rjapxx:v:16:y:2011:i:2:p:143-162. 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/rjap .

    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.