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.
Micronutrient malnutrition is a serious problem in developing countries. It is well established that micronutrient requirements are greater for women and children because of their special needs for reproduction and growth. Unfortunately, however, women and children suffer most from micronutrient deficiencies.
Traditional models of household economic behavior have portrayed households as unified entities. They assume that household members agree about decisions and share resources in the most equitable way possible.
This chapter challenges one of the main tenets of agricultural economics—that households behave as though they are single individuals, with production factors allocated efficiently between men and women. In many contexts this is a convenient and innocuous assumption.
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.
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.
"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;