The Economics of Power and Poverty in the Home: Progress and Challenges in Measuring and Targeting Individual Well-Being within Households (WIDER Studies in Development Economics)

An open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO licence.It is free to read at Oxford Academic and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. The primary goal of economics is, or should be, to improve the living conditions and overall well-being of individuals, but most analyses of inequality, poverty, and the redistributive effects of public policies are conducted instead at the household level.Similarly, the bulk of our data - whether drawn from surveys or administrative records - pertains to households rather than individuals.This approach might be acceptable if households were inherently equitable spaces.However, extensive research across the human and social sciences has revealed significant inequalities within families.Against this backdrop, The Economics of Power and Poverty in the Home begins by exploring what can be measured about the sharing of resources and the distribution of well-being within households, with particul