Chapter 16
Intrahousehold Inequality
Pierre-André Chiappori*; Costas Meghir† * Department of Economics, Columbia University, NY, USA† Department of Economics, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
Abstract
Studies of inequality often ignore resource allocation within the household. In doing so they miss an important element of the distribution of welfare that can vary dramatically depending on overall environmental and economic factors. Thus, measures of inequality that ignore intrahousehold allocations are both incomplete and misleading. We discuss determinants of intrahousehold allocation of resources and welfare. We show how the sharing rule, which characterizes the within-household allocations, can be identified from data on household ...
