This paper compares the poverty rates of male- and female-headed households in Pakistan and, also, in South Africa. It finds that in South Africa, female-headed households are unconditionally poorer than the others. In Pakistan, however, this result holds only in the presence of economies of household size and adult|child consumption relativities, not in the per capita case. The study estimates equivalence scales in the presence of non-linearities in the functional form, and provides evidence of significant economies of household size in both countries. The paper proposes an alternative test of gender bias in the intrahousehold allocation of resources, and applies it to the Pakistani and South African data sets. The results point to some interesting dissimilarities between the Pakistani and South African evidence. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.