• Household responses

Household responses

This paper examines the patterns of food allocation within Ethiopian households, with a particular focus on gender differences and the sources of these differences. The author proposes that different roles assumed by males and females could affect intra-household food allocation in several ways, including:

• the household could allocate resources according to need, and need varies by the activities in which household members engage
• alternatively, gender roles could affect the bargaining power of males and females within the household, thereby affecting the sharing rules

The author finds:

• analyzing data on individual calorie intakes, there is little if any gender differences in the allocation of calories within the household, even after accounting for differential calorie requirements
• there does not appear to be a meaningful effect of potential wages on the allocation of food between adult males and females within the household
• the economic position of women has a positive effect on the food allocated to their children. Pregnant and breastfeeding women experienced inadequate calorie allocation, implying that such women were at higher risk of malnutrition
• children in poorer families tended to consume more calories relative to their parents. Adult female children consumed more calories than their male counterparts, while birth order had a positive effect on calorie consumption among the younger children
• the number of children in the family had a negative effect on each child’s calorie consumption, implying exploitation of children by other household members in families with more children

The author concludes that these results suggest that policies involving fertility control and nutritional support for pregnant and breastfeeding women may reduce the exposure of vulnerable population groups in Southern Ethiopia to the risk of malnutrition.

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