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.

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).

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.

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).

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.

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?

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).

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.

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.

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.