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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This paper explores the effect of land titling on agricultural productivity in Vietnam and the productivity effects of single versus joint titling for husband and wife. Using a plot-fixed-effects approach our results show that obtaining a land title is associated with higher yields, for both individually and jointly held titles. We conclude that there is no trade-off between joint titling and productivity, and so joint titles are potentially an effective way to improve women’s bargaining power within the household with no associated efficiency losses.

There is a close relationship between the health of family farming and the state of urban development.

El destino de la agricultura familiar y el desarrollo urbano están estrechamente vinculados

Le sort fait à l’agriculture familiale et le développement urbain sont étroitement liés.

Processes of land grabbing and accumulation have greatly threatened small-scale family-based agriculture and societies overall. The destruction of small-scale agriculture can be attributed to national and international policies which actively support the development of a capitalist agriculture with employees.

Les processus d’accaparement et de concentration des terres font peser sur l’agriculture familiale paysanne et les sociétés dans leur ensemble de lourdes menaces. La destruction de l’agriculture paysanne est à imputer aux politiques internationales et nationales soutenant activement le développement d’une agriculture capitaliste à salariés.

The international market for agricultural products – where products are traded between countries – represents only 15% of production and world consumption of agricultural products.

Prices of basic commodities traded in this market are very low because the farms that supply it are highly mechanised and capable of producing at very low cost.