Female Headship, Poverty and Child Welfare: A Study of Rural Orissa, India

Abstract

First, on the basis of primary data collected in a rural setting in the \nState of Orissa, an attempt has been made in this paper to compare the \nsocioeconomic status of male- and female- headed households. \nSubsequently the differences in the use of resources (time and money) \nbetween male-headed and female-headed households have been analysed. \nFinally, the paper explores the relative well-being of the children between \nthe two groups, i.e., to what extent female headship influences children’s \naccess to social services, and children’s actual welfare outcomes, \nmeasured in terms of health and education indicators. \nThe results suggest that poverty and female headship are strongly \nlinked in rural Orissa, India. For eample, if we draw a poverty line that \ncorresponds to 15 per cent of the population who are poor, 12 per cent of \npeople living in male-headed househols are poor as compared with 33 \nper cent of people living in female-headed households. This result is \nbased on per capita consumption as the welfare indicator. When 40 per \ncent poverty line is used, the differences are still large in economic terms \nand are statistically significant. Moreover, when we use adjusted \nconsumption as the welfare indicator, the comparisons show a much \nhigher incidence of poverty among female-headed households. This is \ntrue for both masures of poverty line, i.e., 15 per cent and 40 per cent. \nThus, we conclude that female headship can be a better targetting indicator \nfor poverty alleviation in rural Orissa. \nThe results further suggest that the use of resources are significantly \ndifferent between the two types of households. Labour force participation \ndata indicate that female heads are more likely to work in the market \nplace than women who are spouses of male heads of household. The \ndifferences are large: on average 74 per cent verus 54 per cent. \nThe comparison of household expenditures indicates that, femaleheaded \nhouseholds spend relatively less on higher quality food items \nsuch as meat, vegetables, milk and other dairy products. However, there \nis some evidence that they spend less on personal consumption such as \nalcoholic beverages. Overall, the differences are pronounced between \nthese households. \nFinally, the findings show that children in female-headed \nhouseholds are disadvantaged both in terms of access to social services \nand actual welfare outcomes. \nJEL Classification : I12, I32, J12, J13, J16 \nKey words: female headship, poverty, child welfare, gender, \ndifferential resource use, social services, household

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