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Poverty Begins at Home? Questioning some (Mis)conceptions about Children, Poverty and Privation in Female-Headed Households

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  • Sylvia Chant

Abstract

Grounded in a popular stereotype that female-headed households are the ‘poorest of the poor’, it is often assumed that women and children suffer greater poverty than in households which conform with a more common (and idealised) male-headed arrangement. In addition, a conjectured ‘intergenerational transmission of disadvantage’ in female-headed households is imagined not only to compromise the material well-being of children, but to compound other privations – emotional, psychological, social and otherwise. Beyond affecting young people in the short-term, these are also deemed to sow the seeds of future hardship. However, a mounting body of evidence suggests that household headship is not necessarily a good predictor of the start that children have in life, nor of their trajectories into adolescence and adulthood. On the basis of such evidence, the present paper seeks to interrogate -- and challenge -- some (mis)conceptions about female household headship and poverty among children. Background Paper for UNICEF's State of the World's Children 2007]

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  • Sylvia Chant, 2007. "Poverty Begins at Home? Questioning some (Mis)conceptions about Children, Poverty and Privation in Female-Headed Households," Working Papers id:817, eSocialSciences.
    • Handle: RePEc:ess:wpaper:id:817
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    1. Sudhir Anand & Amartya Sen, 2000. "The Income Component of the Human Development Index," Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 1(1), pages 83-106.
    2. Sudhir Anand and Amartya Sen, 2000. "The Income Component of Human Development Index," Human Development Occasional Papers (1992-2007) HDOCPA-2000-01, Human Development Report Office (HDRO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
    3. Appleton, Simon, 1996. "Women-headed households and household welfare: An empirical deconstruction for Uganda," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 24(12), pages 1811-1827, December.
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