Household Resources Allocation, Gender, and Economic Performance: Empirical Evidence from Senegal, West Africa

This paper has examined Pareto efficiency of household resources allocation and the appropriateness to use gender-specific models rather than unitary model while investigating economic performance of men and women managers of separate plots within horticultural households in Senegal, West Africa. This paper contributes to the gender and economics literature providing empirical evidence of intrahousehold resources allocation in a specific social, economic and cultural context in which polygamy occurs and where husband and wives manage separately their plots. The findings confirm the suitability of gender-specific models to shed light on the gender differential of performance. As the subject matter is efficiency, as well in econometric as in economic point of views, the findings provide evidence that there is gain in efficiency using gender-specific models rather than unitary model to illuminate the gender difference. From the findings can be concluded that Pareto optimum corresponding to the situation of allocative efficiency, is far from to be achieved by horticultural households. Some Pareto improvements can be made between men and women’s plots. The gender-specific models showed that women are less technically efficient than men. This suggested some policy implications more gender sensitive to improve men and women ability to manage more efficiently their productive resources.