The bargaining power of men and women crucially shapes the resource allocation decisions households make (Quisumbing and de la Brière 2000). Husbands and wives often use their bargaining power to express different priorities about how resources should be allocated. Understanding these differences and their effects is critical if policymakers are to improve livelihoods. Increasing the bargaining power of one gender group rather than another can mean the difference between policy failure and policy success.

Agrowing body of literature suggests that men and women allocate resources under their control in systematically different ways.

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.

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).

There is renewed interest in the intrahousehold allocation of welfare, particularly among economists studying poor countries where even slight differences in the allocation of household resources can have dramatic consequences on child and female nutrition, morbidity, and mortality (Haddad and Hoddinott 1994; Rose 1999; Dercon and Krishnan 2000). The evidence collected so far tends to demonstrate that the allocation of consumption and leisure among household members varies systematically with their relative contributions to household total income (Thomas 1990; Alderman et al.

Despite substantial economic liberalization since the early 1990s, nontraditional exports in Zambia have grown only moderately and agricultural performance overall has been disappointing. Though agriculture accounts for less than 20 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), it is the most important source of employment, especially for women. Interpretations of Zambia’s poor performance variously emphasize external factors, such as declining copper prices and vulnerability to weather shocks, and market imperfections.

The early work on intrahousehold allocation alerted researchers and policymakers to the possible policy failures that could arise from neglect of intrahousehold allocation issues (Haddad, Hoddinott, and Alderman 1997). Conversely, what are the policy gains from paying attention to these issues? The new research on intrahousehold issues provides evidence that policies and interventions can be made more effective when differential rights, resources, and responsibilities within the household are explicitly considered.

Policymakers have many options for improving women’s status relative to men’s. The most appropriate set of actions in a given situation will naturally be specific to that context. This chapter outlines some policy actions that have proven successful, as summarized in Table 26.1, and gives some examples of their implementation.

Among financial institutions serving poor households around the world, microfinance programs have emerged as important players. These programs typically make small loans—sometimes as small as US$50 to US$100 and sometimes as large as several thousand dollars-to households lacking access to formal-sector banks (see, for example, Lapenu and Zeller 2001). One important achievement of the microfinance movement has been its relative success in deliberately reaching out to poor women living in diverse socioeconomic environments.

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.

Pervasive poverty and undernutrition persist in Bangladesh. About half the country’s 130 million people cannot afford an adequate diet. Poverty has kept generations of families from sending their children to school, and without education their children’s future will be a distressing echo of their own. Furthermore, from birth, children from poor families are often deprived of the basic nutritional building blocks that they need to learn easily. Consequently, the pathway out of poverty is restricted for children from poor families.

It is a well-known fact that households in developing countries often undergo weather-related and other shocks that drastically affect incomes. A large and growing literature explores the effectiveness of response to these events. One strand of the literature addresses the strategies that households and governments use to protect against income shocks (Udry 1990; Fafchamps, Udry, and Czukas 1998; Kochar 1999). A second strand looks at the effectiveness of these strategies in reducing fluctuations in consumption.