Is It Better to Be a Boy? A Disaggregated Outlay Equivalent Analysis of Gender Bias in Papua New Guinea

Abstract:     
Discrimination in the allocation of goods between boys and girls within households in Papua New Guinea is examined using Deaton's (1989) outlay-equivalent ratio method. Adding a boy to the
household reduces expenditure on adult goods by as much as would a nine-tenths reduction in total outlay per member, but girls have no effect on adult goods expenditure. The hypothesis of
Haddad and Reardon (1993) that gender bias is inversely related to the importance of female labour in agricultural production is not supported. There is no evidence of bias against girls in the
urban sector.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 30

Keywords: Boy-girl discrimination, Gender bias, Outlay-equivalent analysis

JEL Classification: D12, J16

working papers series