Are female-headed households time poor? Evidence from Jamaica

Type Journal Article - Social and Economic Studies
Title Are female-headed households time poor? Evidence from Jamaica
Author(s)
Volume 47
Issue 4
Publication (Day/Month/Year) 1998
Page numbers 1-27
URL http://www.cabdirect.org/abstracts/20001805095.html
Abstract
The Survey of Living Conditions (SLC) is an annual household survey that is used to monitor poverty and identify vulnerable groups in Jamaica. Welfare of households is measured by per caput household consumption expenditures, which is justified on both theoretical and practical grounds. However this welfare measure ignores the consumption of leisure, and if the poor work longer hours in order to achieve the same level of goods consumption, then consumption based measures of welfare will overstate the welfare of the poor, and understate the welfare of the rich. The paper estimates leisure consumption from the 1993 SLC to see if female-headed households (FHHs), a vulnerable group in Jamaican society, are 'time poor'. The results indicate that the consumption based measure of welfare used in the SLC does not bias the estimated welfare of FHHs relative to their male counterparts. There is virtually no change in two commonly used poverty indexes (the headcount and the poverty gap) for FHHs when leisure is included in total consumption

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