is there a feminization of poverty in latin america?

World Development Vol. 36, No. 1, pp. 115–127, 2008� 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

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Is There a Feminization of Poverty in Latin America?

MARCELO MEDEIROS and JOANA COSTA *

International Poverty Centre, UNDP, Brasilia—DF, Brazil

Summary. — We propose two different concepts of the feminization of poverty and analyze house-hold survey data to verify if there is an ongoing feminization of poverty in eight Latin Americancountries according to each of these concepts. We also verify if our results respond to changesin values of poverty lines and to different scenarios of intra-household inequalities, concluding thatpoverty may be higher among women, but there is no clear evidence of a recent and widespreadfeminization of poverty in the countries studied.� 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Key words — feminization of poverty, gender inequalities, poverty, female headed households,Latin America

* The authors would like to thank Nanak Kakwani,

Eduardo Zepeda, Alejandro Grinspun, Sergei Soares

and Fabio Veras for comments and Rafael Osorio,

Cristina Queiroz and Luis F. Oliveira for data process-

ing. Final revision accepted: February 26, 2007.

1. INTRODUCTION

Until recently, the idea that there is an ongo-ing feminization of poverty in the world waswidely accepted among women’s advocates.For instance, the Beijing Platform for Action(1995) postulated that the number of womenliving in poverty was increasing disproportion-ately to the number of men, particularly in thedeveloping countries. The same idea was re-stated in at least two United Nations resolu-tions, in 1996 and 2000, and again in a reportby the UN Commission on the Status of Wo-men in 2003 (United Nations, 1996, 2000,2003).

From the equity point of view, the feminiza-tion of poverty should be fought against be-cause it is related to two negative phenomena,poverty and gender inequality. There is littledoubt about the importance of precise informa-tion about this issue for policy design andimplementation. The occurrence of a feminiza-tion of poverty has several implications for thisprocess. One of them is that an increase in thelevels of poverty among women or femaleheaded households can lead to the conclusionthat existing anti-poverty measures may notonly be ineffective but actually have negative ef-fects for women. On the other hand, if this fem-inization is not occurring, research andegalitarian policies would gain from focusingon related but different issues, such as the deter-minants of the economic autonomy of women.

115

The existence of poverty in any group is mor-ally unacceptable and its increase sets prioritiesfor public policies. The occurrence of a femini-zation of poverty would require actions to pro-mote gender equality focusing primarily onanti-poverty measures. However, if feminiza-tion is not occurring, focusing on poverty willimmobilize resources that could be otherwiseused in other strategies for gender equality pro-motion.

Given that political, human, and financialresources are scarce, to a certain extent, anti-poverty measures can conflict with a broaderpro-equity strategy. As Baden and Milward(1997, p. 4) put it, ‘‘Collapsing gender concernsinto a poverty agenda narrows the scope for agender analysis which can fully address howand why gender inequalities are reproduced,not just among the ‘poor’, but in society as awhole.’’

Therefore, despite the limitations we face interms of data availability and the lack of aconsensus on how to define ‘‘feminization,’’empirical research on the issue may helpthe policymaking process by giving informa-tion about the existence or not of an ongoing

116 WORLD DEVELOPMENT

process of feminization of poverty in LatinAmerican countries.

The objective of this paper is twofold, wewant to contribute to the debate over the defi-nition of the feminization of poverty, and wealso want to examine if this feminization isoccurring in Latin America. In order to do thiswe analyze the feminization of poverty litera-ture and we establish two different definitionsof ‘‘feminization of poverty,’’ which are usedat the country level to search for the empiricalevidence of this phenomenon. The countriesincluded in the study are Argentina, Bolivia,Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico,and Venezuela.

2. THE CONCEPT OF THEFEMINIZATION OF POVERTY

The term ‘‘feminization of poverty’’ becamerenowned as a result of a study by Diane Pearcewhich focused on the gender patterns in theevolution of poverty rates in the United Statesbetween the beginning of the 1950s and themid-1970s (Pearce, 1978). In her research, sheused two concepts for the feminization of pov-erty, the first being ‘‘an increase of womenamong the poor’’ and the second ‘‘an increaseof female headed households among the poorhouseholds,’’ the latter becoming the core defi-nition in Pearce’s work.

Using both definitions, Pearce chose to lookat a group among the poor and not at povertyinside a group, which, from the methodologicalpoint of view, makes a substantial difference.For instance, a measurement based on her ap-proach would not change if the impoverish-ment of female headed households wasneutralized by a reduction of the numbers of fe-male headed households in the population. Forthat reason, subsequent studies adopted the‘‘poverty inside a group’’ approach, as doesmost of the research in the field nowadays. Thisapproach is a better way to analyze issues suchas differentials in the incidence, intensity, andseverity of poverty.

Although some studies accepted, at least par-tially, Pearce’s original concepts (Goldberg &Kremen, 1990), part of the subsequent researchused a modified version of Pearce’s main defini-tion and related ‘‘feminization’’ to ‘‘increases inpoverty in female headed households in relationto the levels of male headed households’’(Northrop, 1990; Peterson, 1987; Pressman,1988). Other studies adopted a different

approach and defined ‘‘feminization’’ as‘‘increases in poverty among women in relationto poverty among men’’ (Fuchs, 1986; Wright,1992). Given the existence of multiple concepts,recent studies are assuming more than one def-inition. For instance, Dooley (1994) and Daviesand Joshi (1998) test the hypothesis of the fem-inization of poverty simultaneously against therelative rise in poverty among ‘‘women,’’ ‘‘adultwomen only,’’ and ‘‘female headed households.’’

In spite of its multiple meanings, the femini-zation of poverty should not be confused withthe existence of higher levels of poverty amongwomen or female headed households. By‘‘higher levels of poverty,’’ we mean a higherincidence, intensity, or severity 1 of poverty atsome point in time. The term ‘‘feminization’’relates to the way poverty changes over time,whereas ‘‘higher levels of poverty’’ (which in-cludes the so called ‘‘over-representation’’) fo-cuses on a view of poverty at a givenmoment. Feminization is a process; ‘‘higherpoverty’’ is a state. Being time-dependent, thefirst refers to a trend in the evolution of povertymeasures while the second is related to the lev-els of those measures at a single point in time.

The idea of feminization does not necessarilyimply an absolute worsening in poverty amongwomen. An absolute worsening of poverty is awomen–women comparison taken over time.One may easily argue that such an absoluteworsening does not constitute a feminizationof poverty since by such a definition a feminiza-tion can occur simultaneously with a ‘‘mascu-linization’’ of poverty. If poverty increases forall, it will always imply a ‘‘feminization’’ bythat definition. The feminization of povertyshould rather be understood as a relative con-cept based on a women–men comparison,where what matters are the differences (or ra-tios, depending on the way it is measured) be-tween women and men at each moment.Consequently, if poverty in a society is sharplyreduced among men and is only slightly re-duced among women, there would be a femini-zation of poverty.

Therefore, two definitions of feminization ofpoverty arise. The feminization of povertymay be defined as (a) an increase in the differ-ence in the levels of poverty among womenand among men; (b) an increase in the differ-ence in the levels of poverty among femaleheaded households and among male and coupleheaded households.

Of course, the definitions of feminization ofpoverty discussed so far are not exhaustive.

IS THERE A FEMINIZATION OF POVERTY IN LATIN AMERICA? 117

One could go further and define it as an in-crease of the role that gender discriminationhas as a determinant of poverty, which wouldcharacterize a feminization of the causes ofpoverty. For example, a growth of wage dis-crimination that also intensifies poverty amongwomen and men of all types of families can beunderstood as a feminization of poverty be-cause it denotes the relation between the biasesagainst women and a rise in poverty. In manycases, 2 such changes in the causes of povertywill result in one of the types of feminizationof poverty discussed above, that is, in relativechanges in the poverty levels of women and fe-male headed households.

The two definitions of feminization are basedon distinct indicators and what they indicatedeserves a remark. Measures of poverty‘‘among female headed households’’ and‘‘among women’’ are not indicators of the samephenomena. Both want to capture a genderdimension of poverty but the way they do it isquite distinct. They differ by the unit of analysisand by the population included in each group,and obviously have different meanings.

Poverty among female headed householddoes not intend to be—and is not—a proxyfor poverty among women but still is a gen-der-related problem. Its gender dimension re-fers to a bias that determines familycomposition, particularly to the fact that wo-men tend to assume the responsibility for chil-dren in the case of dissolution of maritalunions and the fact that mortality and age dif-ferentials in marriage result in female single-person households. The goal of headship-basedindicators is to represent what happens to spe-cific vulnerable groups of women and theirfamilies, therefore their unit of analysis is thehousehold and the population considered in-cludes both men and women (and children)living in these households, but excludeswomen and men living in other household for-mations.

Indicators of poverty among females, bytheir turn, have a distinct unit of analysis asthey make a complete separation of men andwomen as individuals. Their goal is to establisha clear-cut division of sex-based categories andfor that they may count or not children as agendered group in their aggregations. However,as poverty is usually measured at the householdlevel (weighted by size) and these individualswill still be living together in their households,interpreting the results is affected by the factthat female poverty is, by construction of the

indicator, intrinsically associated to male pov-erty and vice versa.

As any other indicators, these are tools andas such their appropriateness must be assessedinstrumentally, that is, in terms of the purposesthey will serve to. They both have weaknessesand of course their weaknesses are a guide toreject the use of one or another. Nevertheless,neither indicator is more or less a gender indi-cator until the exact meaning of ‘‘gender’’ bedefined. The goal here is not to make the casefor any of the possible choices but simply tostate clearly that these indicators represent gen-der-related but different phenomena.

3. PREVIOUS STUDIES

The previous studies relating gender and pov-erty can be grouped in two broad categories.The first is composed of studies about theover-representation of women among the poorat a given moment; the second, by studieson the process of the feminization of poverty.The studies about over-representation comprisethe great majority and have been carried out inmany regions of the world. The studies aboutthe feminization of poverty—in the sense weuse the term here—are less common and almostall are limited to developed countries. As far aswe know, there is no study about the feminiza-tion of poverty in Latin America similar to this.

Despite the fact that they do not follow pov-erty rates over time, the studies of the firstgroup frequently define ‘‘the feminization ofpoverty’’ as the higher incidence of povertyamong women or female headed households,which causes some terminological confusion.As discussed before, this is not compatible withthe original definitions of the feminization ofpoverty, neither is it part of the other defini-tions we proposed. Therefore, we will classifythose studies as research on over-representa-tion, even if their authors call them studies onthe feminization of poverty.

There is no evidence of a systematic over-rep-resentation of women among the poor aroundthe world. Several studies have found a higherincidence of poverty among women or femaleheaded households in some countries, but inmany others, this does not occur. Surprisingly,a higher incidence of poverty among femaleheaded households in developing countries isnot a common finding. In addition, the rela-tionship between poverty and female headshipof households seems not to be direct, as poverty


appears to have a stronger correlation with thepresence of children in the family and othercharacteristics of family members than withthe sex of the household head (Baden & Mil-ward, 1997; Chant, 2003; Lipton & Ravallion,1995; Moghadam, 1997).

In studies in developed countries and transi-tion economies in the 1980s and 1990s that fo-cus on the sex of poor people, Pressman (2002,2003), Bradshaw, Finch, Kemp, Mayhew, andWilliams (2003), Lochhead and Scott (2000)and Casper, McLanahan, and Garfinkel(1994) identify a significantly higher vulnerabil-ity and/or incidence of poverty among womenin the United States, Canada, Australia, Rus-sia, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Anexception to that in more than one study wasSpain, as Pressman (2002) and Fernandez-Mor-ales and Haro-Garcıa (1998) demonstrate.Focusing on the headship of the households,Pressman (2002) concluded that from 24 devel-oped countries in the Luxembourg IncomeStudy, eight show very small or insignificantgender poverty gaps and eleven have onlyslightly higher poverty rates and that those re-sults were not affected by different poverty linesor the assumption of economies of scale in thehouseholds.

The research in non-developed countriestends to focus more on the headship of thehouseholds. Fuwa (2000), Marcoux (1998)and Quisumbing, Haddad, and Pena (1995)found weak evidence, if any, of a higher inci-dence of poverty among female headed house-holds in Sub-Saharan Africa (Botswana, CoteD’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, Madagascar, andRwanda), Asia (Bangladesh, Indonesia, andNepal), and 13 countries of Latin America. In-deed, in some countries, they are better off thanmale headed households. On the other hand, inBrazil and in the urban areas of India, the prob-ability of being poor is higher among femaleheaded households (Barros, Fox, & Mendonca,1994; Gangopadhyay & Wadhwa, 2003).

Comparative analyses of several studies con-cluded that the over-representation of womenor female headed households varies from coun-try to country and that there is no clear patternof relationship between poverty and the head-ship of the households. Buvinic and Gupta(1997) compared the results of 61 studies andpointed out that 38 of them concluded thatthere was an over-representation of femaleheaded households among the poor, 15 foundsome kind of relationship between certain typesof female headship and poverty, and eight did

not find any relation. Lampietti and Stalker(2000) analyzed more than a hundred reportsand studies and found that only in certaincountries the female headed households consis-tently present worse indicators of poverty,hence the idea that poverty has a ‘‘female face’’cannot be generalized for the entire world.

It is worth mentioning that the majority ofthe studies above measure poverty by consump-tion or income, a procedure that has raisedsome warnings. According to Baden and Mil-ward (1997), a moneymetric approach to pov-erty has some limitations for gender studies asthis approach is insensitive to the specific formsof deprivation suffered by women, such asdomestic violence and lack of autonomy.Therefore, it should be noted that the results ci-ted above make reference to only one aspect ofpoverty. If these other aspects were considered,the over-representation of women among thepoor could increase, but the same may not besaid about a feminization of poverty.

In addition, most of these studies neglect in-tra-household inequalities, another importantissue in gender studies which aims at measuringthe over-representation of women among thepoor. The difficulty in obtaining data is a mainobstacle to showing intra-household inequali-ties, but some studies have tried to incorporatesuch inequalities. Findlay and Wright (1996)simulated an unequal division of incomeamong family members to illustrate how muchof the incidence and intensity of poverty inItaly and the United States could be underesti-mated by the conventional ‘‘perfect distribu-tion’’ assumption. Case and Deaton (2003)describe household expenditures in India andSouth Africa, showing that in the latter, coun-try differences in household expenditures onhealth clearly benefit adult men. Haddad andKanbur (1990) found significantly higher levelsof poverty among women in the Southern Phil-ippines when intra-household inequalities weretaken into account. Using data from Bangla-desh, Indonesia, Ethiopia, and South Africa,Quisumbing and Maluccio (2000) concludedthat the hypothesis that family members aggre-gate their income to redistribute it equally doesnot hold: the personal attributes of the individ-uals (sex, age, assets, human capital, and oth-ers) determine the final allocation amongfamily members, which usually favors men.

As in the case of over-representation, there isno clear evidence in the literature about theoccurrence of a feminization of poverty in theworld. The pioneer study conducted by Pearce


(1978) found an increase of both women and fe-male headed household members among theAmerican poor between the 1950s and themid-1970s. Subsequent research (Fuchs, 1986;Goldberg & Kremen, 1990; Northrop, 1990;Peterson, 1987; Pressman, 1988) reached thesame conclusions for the 1960s in the UnitedStates, but Fuchs (1986) rejects the hypothesisfor the years after 1970 and Northrop (1990)and Pressman (1988) also reject it for the1980s. Peterson (1987) and Goldberg and Kre-men (1990) maintain that there was a feminiza-tion of poverty in the United States after the1970s.

Wright (1992) and Davies and Joshi (1998)examined data from the United Kingdom fromthe late 1960s to the mid 1980s and did not findany feminization of poverty. In Canada, Doo-ley (1994) found a feminization of poverty dur-ing 1973–90 when ‘‘feminization’’ wasunderstood as an ‘‘increase among femaleheaded households,’’ but not when the ‘increaseamong women’ definition was used. Goldbergand Kremen (1990) analyze gender inequalitiesin Canada, Japan, France, Sweden, the SovietUnion, Poland, and the United States, butshow empirical evidence of the feminization ofpoverty only in the United States. To the bestof our knowledge, no analogous research wasconducted in other parts of the world; there-fore, determining the existence or not of a fem-inization of poverty in Latin America is amatter of empirical analysis.

4. METHODOLOGY

(a) Data

The study was conducted using unit recorddata (microdata) available from household sur-veys of Argentina (Encuesta Permanente deHogares, 1992 and 2001), Bolivia (Encuesta deHogares-Programa MECOVI, 1999 and 2002),Brazil (Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Dom-icılios, 1983 and 2003), Chile (Encuesta deCaracterizacion Socioeconomica Nacional,1990 and 2000), Colombia (Encuesta Nacionalde Hogares—Fuerza de Trabajo-ProgramaMECOVI, 1995 and 1999), Costa-Rica (Encu-esta de Hogares de Propositos Multiples, 1990and 2001), Mexico (Encuesta Nacional de Ingre-sos y Gastos de los Hogares, 1992 and 2002),and Venezuela (Encuesta de Hogares porMuestreo-Programa MECOVI, 1995 and2000). All these surveys were conducted by

national statistical institutes and presentnational coverage, except for the Argentineone, which is representative only of urban areas.

These countries represent the majority of thepopulation in Latin America. To a certain ex-tent, what happened in terms of the feminiza-tion of poverty in the countries studied isrepresentative of other countries in the region,although this would be less valid for CentralAmerica, which is under-represented in thestudy. In spite of this, one must bear in mindthat more detailed results, such as poverty lev-els or growth rates, are country-specific, andtherefore, cannot be generalized.

If seen as a structural problem related to sta-ble gender inequalities, the feminization of pov-erty would be best analyzed by looking attrends of poverty over long periods. For somecountries, such as Bolivia, we are looking at rel-atively short periods. In such cases, the resultsshould be treated with caution, despite the factthat trends observed over longer periods forother countries are reproduced in short periodanalysis. We believe that our study indicatesthe changes in the levels and composition ofpoverty in the 1990s–2000s fairly well.

The feminization of poverty depends thisonly on what is ‘‘feminization’’ but also onthe definition of ‘‘poverty.’’ In this regard ourstudy is quite limited: although there are severaldifferent ways to define poverty (Spicker, 1998),we only look at poverty as income deprivation.This limitation can be of particular importancein the case of gender studies; for instance, amultidimensional approach could indicate thatless relative income deprivation of women isbeing achieved at the cost of more relative timedeprivation, that is, two dimensions of povertywith opposite trends. We believe that it isimportant to highlight this limitation and men-tion that the data we have do not allow us toproceed differently. At any rate, it should benoted that, if data are available, the methodol-ogy used to test the hypothesis of feminizationcan be applied both to more than one dimen-sion of poverty and to synthetic indexes of mul-tidimensional poverty.

A great effort was made to use the same typeof data in each country. Firstly, we could notuse consumption expenditure data since thiskind of data is not available for all countries,so our measurement of poverty is based on in-come data. Secondly, to have similar variablesfor all countries, we decided to use income fromall sources and from all household members(including children). This includes income from


any type of paid work, self-employment, pen-sions, transfers, rents, capital gains, in kindpayments (their monetary value as imputed inthe survey), and any other sources, for the pop-ulation aged 10 or more years. All the values re-fer to gross income (before taxes, deductions,and bonuses) but discounting production ex-penses, when they apply. We used the total in-come data exactly as provided in the surveyfiles, with no transformations or adjustments.Although there are methodological differencesin the way each survey was conducted in therespective country, no cross-country analyseswere conducted in the study; therefore, the lackof full comparability among countries shouldnot be seen as a major problem.

(b) The measurement of the feminization ofpoverty

The feminization of poverty is defined as anincrease in the levels of poverty among womenor female headed households relative to the lev-els of men or male headed households. Thiscould be measured either as ratios or as differ-ences. We believe that differences are moreappropriate than ratios for this purpose. In thisstudy we use Foster, Greer, and Thorbecke’s(1984) Pa measures of poverty, which are al-ready ratios themselves. The use of ratios canmislead some interpretations since small per-centage point differences can lead to large ratiodifferences, which is not an adequate result in astudy such as this.

To examine the feminization or not of pov-erty, two tests can be applied, one for each typeof definition of the feminization of poverty:

(a) an increase in the differential of povertybetween women and men

P atðfpÞ � P atðmpÞ < P at0ðfpÞ � P at0ðmpÞ : ð1Þ(b) an increase in the differential poverty be-

tween female and male headed households(‘‘male’’ headed households includes coupleheaded households).

P atðfhÞ � P atðmhÞ < P at0ðfhÞ � P at0ðmhÞ ; ð2Þwhere Pa stands for the Foster, Greer andThorbecke (1984) measures of poverty (FGT),t and t 0 for the initial and final points in time(that is, t<t 0),

(f) for the female subgroup, (m)

for male, (p) for persons, and (h) for headedhouseholds. Therefore, P atðfpÞ represents thepoverty among female persons at the initial mo-ment, and so on.

(c) The poverty line

The Pa measures, and therefore, the test ofthe hypotheses, depend on the value of a pov-erty line z. According to the shape of the distri-bution of the income of a population, changesin the value of z can affect the results of anypoverty study. To avoid this ‘‘poverty line ef-fect,’’ we initially performed a sensitivity analy-sis, testing all the hypotheses for differentvalues of poverty lines. As the results werefairly robust, we concluded that the exact valueof the poverty line was of secondary impor-tance for the study of the process of the femini-zation of poverty and decided to adopt apoverty line based on a simple methodology.

We proceeded by determining a rather arbi-trary value for z in the latest survey availablefor each country and deflating its nominal valueto obtain the line for the initial period. We setthe poverty line z as the value of the 40th per-centile of the family per capita income distribu-tion in the latest survey available ðzt0 Þ, as inmany of the countries studied, the poverty inci-dence calculated with local absolute povertylines in the 1990s was a little lower than 40%(UNDP, 1995). Then we used a consumer priceindex in each country to transform zt0 and esti-mate the absolute value of the poverty line inthe initial period (zt).

The sensitivity analysis was performed usingpoverty lines that varied from the real valuesof the cutting points of the 30th to the 50th per-centiles of each population in the latest surveysavailable. Given the stability of results after thesensitivity analysis, we chose to present ourconclusions using, for the most part, the inter-mediate 40th percentile poverty line.

(d) Intra-household inequalities and equivalencescales

Although the concept of poverty is frequentlyrelated to individual well-being, its measure-ment often occurs at the household (family) 3

level. Poverty is usually measured using house-hold per capita income, that is, under theassumption that the income in the householdis equally distributed. This assumption can bedisputed. There is no reason to believe thatthe factors that determine gender inequalitiesin the public sphere will not act within the fam-ilies. On the contrary, despite the scarcity ofdata to support such research, there is some evi-dence that intra-household inequalities in con-sumption occur at relevant levels (Haddad &


Kanbur, 1990; Quisumbing & Maluccio, 2000;Sen, 1997a, 1997b). These differences in con-sumption can be taken as an indicator of an un-equal distribution of the total family incomeamong family members.

Still, the mere existence of intra-householdinequalities between men and women does notaffect feminization as defined here. This wouldoccur only if these inequalities change duringthe period of analysis or in case of changes inthe demographic composition of the house-holds. A similar rationale would apply if adultsand children (or any age groups) or men andwomen were weighted differently to reflect adifferentiation in consumption needs or if econ-omies of scale were considered. Adjusting datawith constant equivalence scales would affectthe estimates only if relevant demographicchanges in the households occur.

There is no data available to determine theactual trends of intra-household inequalitiesin the eight countries studied. Neither it is pos-sible to establish empirically if any type ofequivalence scales in these countries should bechanging over time. Any arbitrary assumptionabout the behavior of either intra-householdinequalities in the distribution of incomes orthe way different family members should beweighted could bring an undesired bias to theresults. For the sake of parsimony and pru-dence, we assumed both to be constant duringthe period of our analysis.

Yet, certain changes in household composi-tion would still be a reason for adjusting datawith equivalence scales and assumptions aboutinequalities in the distribution of income withinthe families. There is, however, little reason tobelieve that these changes would be enough toalter the patterns of the feminization of pov-erty. Despite the impressive fall in fertility levelsin some Latin American countries during the1980s, changes in the composition of the house-holds were of smaller proportions during the1990s (Eclac, 2002).

We tested the hypothesis of the feminizationof poverty using a square root equivalence scale(Atkinson, Rainwater, & Smeeding, 1995, p.18) as well as assuming inequalities in the in-tra-household distribution by simulating thatindividuals distribute within their families onlya fraction (from 0% to 100%) of the incomethey receive, this second approach being simi-lar to the one used by Findlay and Wright(1996).

The income adjusted by the equivalence scaleis determined by

~yij ¼1

nej

Xnj

i¼1

yij; ð3Þ

where ~yij is the adjusted income of the individ-ual i in the household j, yij is the observed in-come of each individual of the household, n isthe size of the household, and e is the parameterthat represents economies of scale. We sete = 0.5 (square root) following Atkinson et al.(1995, p. 21); e = 1 corresponds to per capitaincome.

The assumption of different levels of inequal-ity in the distribution of income within thehouseholds can be expressed as

yij ¼ ð1� kÞyij þknj

Xnj

i¼1

yij ð4Þ

for k = (0, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75, 1), where yij is thesimulated income an individual i is entitled to,in the household j, yij is the observed personalincome of this individual, k is the parameterfor the proportion of personal income of thisindividual distributed within the household(varying from zero to one) and n is the size ofthe household.

Using data from the household surveys, wetested the two feminization hypotheses withthree different FGT poverty measures, P0, P1,and P2 (incidence, intensity, and severity ofpoverty). The outcomes were quite robust withregard to variations in the values of the lines,use of equivalence scales, and assumptionsabout intra-household inequalities, so wedecided to present the main findings in summa-rized tables, showing the values of the povertymeasures in the countries only for the ‘‘40thpercentile in latest survey’’ poverty line andusing household per capita income.

5. RESULTS

There is no relevant difference in the inci-dence, intensity, or severity of poverty amongmen and women in the Latin American coun-tries studied (Table A-1, Appendix). 4 We finddifferences in the levels of poverty accordingto the types of families, but not necessarilyshowing a disadvantage in female headedhouseholds. These differences are much morerelated to the existence of children in the fami-lies than to the type of family headship.

The absence of higher levels of poverty doesnot exclude, however, the possibility of a femi-nization of poverty in these countries. Table 1

Table 1. Trends of the feminization of poverty—summary based on Table A-1 (appendix)

Country (period) Total poverty trends Feminization of poverty, according to hypothesis

Women–Men Female–Male headed HH

Argentina (92/01) Increased No (except for P2)a YesBolivia (99/02) Stable No No (except for females without children)b

Brazil (83/03) Decreased No NoChile (90/00) Decreased No NoColombia (95/99) increased No NoCosta Rica (90/01) Decreased No No (except for females with children)c

Mexico (92/02) Decreased No YesVenezuela (95/00) Increased No No

Source: Authors’ calculations based on the respective national household surveys.Note: ‘‘No’’ stands for a rejection of the feminization of poverty hypothesis and ‘‘Yes’’ for the opposite. Differencesin P(a) disparities lower than 0.01 were rounded to zero.a The difference in P2 disparities is 0.01.b The exception occurs when comparing female headed HH without children to couple headed HH without children;the difference in P0 disparities reaches 0.10 and the differences in P1 and P2 disparities are less than 0.05.c The exception occurs when comparing female headed households with children to male headed households withchildren; the difference in P0, P1 and P2 disparities reaches at most 0.05.


below presents a summary of the results of thetests of hypothesis about the feminization ofpoverty for each country using the three mea-sures of poverty calculated for the 40th percen-tile poverty line using per capita income. Forthe two definitions of the feminization of pov-erty we examined, most of the results were neg-ative. Nonetheless, a number of these negativeswere not completely conclusive, as some mea-sures of poverty seemed to indicate very lowlevels of the feminization of poverty. Similar

Table 2. Changes in the trends of the feminization of povertydistribution, and e

Countries Sensitivity to differentpoverty lines

Sensit

Women–Men Female–Maleheaded HH

Argentina (92/01) No NoBolivia (99/02) No NoBrazil (83/03) No NoChile (90/00) No NoColombia (95/99) No NoCosta Rica (90/01) No NoMexico (92/02) No NoVenezuela (95/00) No No

Source: Authors’ calculations based on the respective natioNote: This table refers to results of Table 1; ‘‘No’’ meansTable 1 and ‘‘Yes’’ stands for the opposite. Differences inSensitivity to intra-household inequalities does not apply ta The exceptions are P2 of female with children and P1 andand P2 disparities are lower or equal to 0.01.

exceptions to the general trends were found insome of the countries where the results were po-sitive.

There is no explicit evidence of a feminizationof poverty in the Latin American countriesstudied. If we ignore minor exceptions, differ-ences below 0.01 and consider the entire set ofdefinitions tested, an increase in the differentialpoverty between women and men did not occurin any of the countries studied. An increase inthe differential poverty among female and male

(Table 1) after changes in poverty lines, intra-householdquivalence scale

ivity to Intra-householdinequality

Sensitivity to equivalencescale

Women–Men Women–Men Female–Maleheaded HH

No No NoNo No NoNo No NoNo No NoNo No Noa

No No NoNo No NoNo No No

nal household surveys.there was no relevant change in the trends presented inP(a) disparities lower than 0.01 were rounded to zero.

o the comparison between types of households.P2 of female without children. But the differences in P1


headed households occurred only in Argentinaand Mexico. Except for very small differencesin few poverty indicators, no feminization ofpoverty occurred in Bolivia, Brazil, Chile,Colombia, Costa Rica, or Venezuela.

The sensitivity analysis points out that thevalues of the poverty lines, assumptions aboutintra-household inequalities, and the use ofequivalence scales are of secondary importancefor the study. As Table 2 shows, these modifica-tions did not result in any substantial alterationin the trends presented in Table 1. Changes oc-cur only in a few of the estimates, and then atan irrelevant level.

Table 1 refers to poverty among women andmen of all ages and in all positions in the fam-ily. To evaluate the extent to which the resultswere dependent on the age and position inthe family of the persons, we also carried outthe analysis using the per capita income of the40th percentile poverty line for a group com-posed only of heads of the families and theirpartners. Except for minor variations in Argen-tina, no relevant differences were found in theresults when the analysis was restricted tothis more specific population (not shown intables).

Therefore, if we do not take into accountsmall variations and minor ambiguities result-ing from the use of different concepts of femini-zation, measures of poverty, poverty lines, andthe methodology used to treat household in-come, we may conclude that there is no solidevidence of a process of feminization of povertyin the Latin American region. On the contrary,it seems that Argentina and Mexico are theonly countries among the eight studied wherewe can speak of a certain type of feminizationof poverty.

6. CONCLUSIONS

It must be recognized that there are defini-tions of the feminization of poverty coexisting.Indeed, both ‘‘feminization’’ and ‘‘poverty’’ canthemselves be concepts with various meanings,which allows many different phenomena to beseen as feminization of poverty. This study de-parted from the idea that the concept of thefeminization of poverty is related to a genderbias in the evolution of poverty over the years.We related the increase in the differences be-tween women and men and between femaleand male headed households to the feminiza-tion of poverty to avoid confusion with the idea

of the so-called over-representation of womenor female headed households among the poor.To conduct the study we used two different def-initions of feminization, based on inequalitiesbetween women and men and between maleand female headed households.

The concept of the feminization of povertyalso depends on the way poverty is definedand, to some extent, measured. Given the limi-tations faced in data availability, we adopted aconventional approach and based the study onincome poverty. Our conclusions refer mainlyto that type of poverty, but it may be inferredthat other types of poverty that depend directlyon the consumption of market goods (such asdeprivation in food intake) or depend on goodsand services that are consumed collectively bythe family (such as potable water and sanita-tion) will follow patterns similar to the oneswe found here.

Our analysis is restricted to eight countries inLatin America. These countries, however, rep-resent the majority of the population of the re-gion. Obviously some results are countryspecific and cannot be generalized, but there isno reason to believe that these countries arenot a reference for understanding what hashappened in the entire region, especially in rela-tion to South America, since Mexico and CostaRica are the only countries in the study that donot belong to this subcontinent.

Previous studies have identified a higher vul-nerability and/or incidence of poverty amongwomen in some developed countries and transi-tion economies. On the other hand, research ondeveloping countries has found weak evidenceof a higher incidence of poverty among femaleheaded households. Recent comparative analy-ses of several studies have concluded that therelationship between family headship or thegender of the individual, and poverty variesfrom country to country. A similar conclusionwas reached concerning the feminization ofpoverty in developed countries. Depending onthe way it is defined, feminization has occurredin some countries and in some periods, but nosystematic feminization of poverty has been ob-served in Europe or North America.

In the countries studied, we found no in-crease in the differential poverty between wo-men and men. Only in Argentina and Mexicowas an increase observed in differential povertyamong female and male headed householdsduring the periods analyzed. Excluding somevery small variations in a few of the povertyindicators, no feminization of poverty occurred


in Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica,or Venezuela.

Broadly speaking, these findings are insensi-tive to variations in the values of the povertylines, the use of equivalence scales, or assump-tions about inequality in the distribution ofhousehold income. If we ignore variations ofminor importance, we may conclude that thereis no clear evidence of a recent and widespreadfeminization of poverty in the Latin Americancountries studied. This conclusion is in line withthe existing studies carried out in developedcountries, but we do not believe it could bestraightforwardly generalized to other coun-tries and regions.

Our conclusions are not enough to allow usto prescribe any anti-poverty policy, but someimplications for public policies could be men-tioned. First, we must differentiate over-repre-sentation (and higher intensity and severity)of poverty from the feminization of poverty,as these are not just conceptual details, but phe-nomena that are moving in different directions.Over-representation informs us about the sizeof the problem that has to be solved; the latterprovides information about the progress of thestatus of women over time that allows us toevaluate how changes in society are reducingor increasing gender-biased poverty. Our study

shows that female poverty is not increasing.Therefore, from a political perspective, the con-cerns about a feminization of poverty shouldnot overshadow the debate on gender inequal-ity.

The definitions of the feminization of povertywe anal‘d are not exhaustive, but they cover alarge portion of the definitions used in the liter-ature in this field and in the public debate aboutthe issue. Yet, we did not directly examine oneimportant aspect of the feminization of pov-erty, the increase in the direct role that genderinequalities in education or the labor marketmay have as a determinant of poverty. We be-lieve that future studies could pay attention tothat, although our evidence does not give anyindication that this kind of feminization of pov-erty is occurring in Latin America.

We are not sure if our conclusions wouldhold true for dimensions of poverty other thanincome or family-consumed goods and services.Poverty understood as the deprivation ofhealth, for example, does not share the samedeterminants as income deprivation, and there-fore, may exhibit a different behavior from thatwhich we found in this study. It would be inter-esting if future research could analyze otherdimensions of poverty not directly related tothe ones examined here.

NOTES

1. The incidence of poverty is usually measured by theproportion of the poor in a population, the intensity ofpoverty, income poverty, the aggregated differencebetween the observed income of the poor and thepoverty line, and the severity of poverty for somecombination of the incidence and intensity of povertyand inequality among the poor.

2. If wage discrimination grows, but other determi-nants of poverty (such as low education) decrease, thenit is possible that the measures of poverty do not change

over time, although there is a feminization of the causesof poverty.

3. We use family and household interchangeably sincethe large majority of households in Latin America areoccupied by a single group of relatives (family).

4. Of course, this picture would change and womenwould be over-represented among the poor if we assumedthat there is no perfect distribution within the householdsand the individuals retain part of the income they earn.

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APPENDIX 1

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(See Overleaf)

Table A-1. Poverty measures for the ‘‘40th percentile of per capita income in latest survey’’ poverty line

Poverty measure Argentina Bolivia Brazil Chile Colombia Costa Rica Mexico Venezuela

1992 2001 1999 2002 1983 2003 1990 2000 1995 1999 1990 2001 1992 2002 1995 2000

Incidence (P0)

Male 0.26 0.41 0.40 0.40 0.54 0.40 0.53 0.40 0.34 0.40 0.51 0.39 0.45 0.40 0.37 0.39Female 0.25 0.39 0.41 0.40 0.54 0.40 0.55 0.40 0.34 0.40 0.52 0.41 0.45 0.40 0.39 0.41

Couple with children 0.27 0.43 0.41 0.42 0.56 0.44 0.56 0.42 0.36 0.42 0.52 0.40 0.47 0.42 0.38 0.41Couple without children 0.18 0.19 0.48 0.35 0.33 0.17 0.34 0.21 0.27 0.33 0.41 0.33 0.33 0.29 0.21 0.24Female with children 0.29 0.48 0.35 0.34 0.59 0.45 0.60 0.46 0.32 0.38 0.54 0.47 0.37 0.41 0.42 0.43Female without children 0.11 0.17 0.33 0.30 0.39 0.19 0.40 0.25 0.31 0.33 0.55 0.41 0.29 0.33 0.40 0.27Other types of family 0.23 0.31 0.28 0.32 0.37 0.25 0.41 0.29 0.28 0.33 0.40 0.29 0.35 0.26 0.29 0.32

Intensity (P1)

Male 0.14 0.22 0.23 0.23 0.27 0.19 0.24 0.16 0.17 0.22 0.23 0.17 0.20 0.16 0.16 0.18Female 0.13 0.21 0.24 0.22 0.27 0.19 0.25 0.17 0.17 0.22 0.24 0.18 0.20 0.17 0.17 0.18


Severity (P2)

Male 0.11 0.15 0.18 0.17 0.17 0.12 0.14 0.09 0.12 0.17 0.15 0.11 0.12 0.09 0.09 0.11Female 0.10 0.16 0.18 0.16 0.17 0.11 0.15 0.10 0.12 0.17 0.15 0.11 0.12 0.09 0.10 0.11


Source: Authors’ calculations based on national household surveys.Note: Values rounded.

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is there a feminization of poverty in latin america?

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