Since 1997 Mexico has provided poor families with cash benefits linked to children’s school attendance and regular clinic attendance, as well as in-kind health benefits and nutritional supplements, through the Programa Nacional de Educación, Salud y Alimentación (PROGRESA). Unlike previous social programs in Mexico, this nationwide antipoverty program targets transfers to the mother of the family.

Many decisions that affect the well-being of individuals are made within families or households. The processes by which resources are allocated among individuals and the outcomes of those processes are commonly referred to as “intrahousehold resource allocation.” Since the early 1990s a growing literature has paid increasing attention to the role that intrahousehold resource allocation plays in affecting the outcome of development policy (see Strauss and Thomas 1995; Behrman 1997; Haddad, Hoddinott, and Alderman 1997 for reviews).

The previous sections have highlighted the importance of assets as a determinant of bargaining power within marriage. Both formal and informal institutions underlie asset accumulation and provide the basis for property rights. When women face social and legal restrictions in acquiring certain forms of assets, such as land, they may resort to accumulating other “assets” and investing in other forms of capital.

The concept of social capital, well grounded in the sociological and anthropological literatures (for example, Coleman 1988), is increasingly being analyzed and used by economists and other development policy practitioners. The entry point for many economists is Robert Putnam’s research on Italian regional economic performance (Putnam 1993) and his subsequent work in the United States. For Putnam, “social capital refers to features of social organization such as networks, norms, and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit” (Putnam 1995, 67).

Most economic research treats the household as a single agent, assuming that individuals within the household share the same preferences or that there is a household “head” who has the final say. This simple framework has proved immensely useful; despite a common misperception, it can explain many differences in well-being or consumption patterns within households.

Economists who analyze household decisionmaking allocation have traditionally assumed that the household acts as a single unit. They assume that there exists one decisionmaker whose preferences form the basis of household welfare and that all household resources are effectively pooled. This approach is known as the “unitary model,” the “common preference model,” or the “joint family utility model,” depending on the study consulted.

"To end hunger and prevent the recurrence of famine and starvation, we need to take the following steps: invest in public health, child nutrition, education, women’s and girls’ social status, and other components of human capital; reform public institutions and create innovative funding and partnership arrangements; change government policies at all levels to be both pro-poor and pro-growth; increase funding for scientific and technological research to boost agricultural production and efficiency; and develop specific policies and institutions to deal with environmental degradation caused

This book synthesizes IFPRI's recent work on the role of gender in household decisionmaking in developing countries, provides evidence on how reducing gender gaps can contribute to improved food security, health, and nutrition in developing countries, and gives examples of interventions that actually work to reduce gender disparities. It is an accessible, easy-to-read synthesis of the gender research that IFPRI has undertaken in the 1990s.

This study explores the impact of changes in environmental conditions on intrahousehold labor allocation to the collection of environmental goods such as fuelwood and leaf fodder for a sample of rural Nepali households. Using household-level panel data collected in 1982 and 1997, the study finds that household collection time significantly increases with measures of environmental resource scarcity, and that the increase appears to come almost equally from men and women.

The collective model of the household predicts that bargaining power determines the share of resources allocated to an individual within the household. The concept of bargaining power is elusive, however. It is perhaps useful at this point to outline the possible determinants of bargaining power, while not making any claims to measure power itself.

La Oficina Regional de la FAO para América Latina y el Caribe, con la colaboración de la Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL) y la Organización Internacional de Trabajo (OIT) realizó durante los años 2009-2011 una investigación regional titulada Políticas de mercado de trabajo y pobreza rural. En el marco de esta investigación se profundizó el análisis sobre las condiciones laborales en un sector que concentra una importante proporción de mano de obra femenina.

Esta publicación da cuenta de una parte de los resultados de la participación de América LAtina y el Caribe en la Primera Asamblea General del Foro (Estambul, Turquía, del 28 al 30 de Setiembre de 2010). El documento contiene textos producidos en el marco de las actividades del Foro Abierto sobre la Efectividad del Desarrollo de las Organizaciones de la Sociedad Civil.