Gender and multidimensional poverty in Nicaragua: An individual based approach

Abstract

Most existing empirical papers concerned about multidimensional poverty use the household as the unit of analysis, meaning that multidimensional poverty status of the household is equated with the multidimensional poverty status of all individuals in the household. This assumption, nonetheless, overlooks important within-household features and ignores the intra-household inequalities. Besides, by definition, households containing both a female and a male cannot contribute to a gender gap, so gender differentials cannot be estimated. But, the Sustainable Development Goals have put special emphasis on gender equality along their targets; therefore, new measures able to capture the gender differences are needed. Consequently, in this paper, we propose an individual-based multidimensional poverty measure in order to estimate the three Is of multidimensional poverty (incidence, intensity, and inequality) in Nicaragua as well as the gender differentials. We also estimate logit regressions to better understanding the determinants of multidimensional poverty in this country. Overall, we find that there are statistically significant gender differences in multidimensional poverty in Nicaragua; but, they are estimated to be small and lower than 5%. However, the gender differential in inequality is larger than 10%, and it suggests that multidimensional poor women are living in very intense poverty when compared with multidimensional poor men. We also find that the elderly and children are the most vulnerable people in terms of multidimensional poverty in this country; furthermore, when information on employment, domestic work, and social protection is considered in the analysis, the gender gaps become more substantial, and women are more likely to be poor than men.

Multi-Dimensional Poverty Among Adults in Central America and Gender Differences in the Three I’s of Poverty: Applying Inequality Sensitive Poverty Measures With Ordinal Variables

“…It also appears that, ceteris paribus, adults living in rural areas have a much larger probability of being multi-dimensionally poor, this being true for all scenarios. Such a result was emphasized previously in the literature (see, for instance, Alkire & Santos, 2014;Battiston, Cruces, López-Calva, Lugo, & Santos, 2013;ECLAC, 2013;Espinoza-Delgado & Klasen, 2018;Santos & Villatoro, 2018). In other words, multidimensional poverty in Central America still largely remains a rural phenomenon, an observation that has evidently important policy implications (Espinoza-Delgado & Klasen, 2018).…”

“…Note that the indicators included in the last three dimensions are considered to be nonrival and non-excludable goods, that is, they are regarded as public goods, accessible equally to every individual within the household (Espinoza-Delgado & Klasen, 2018;Klasen & Lahoti, 2016;Vijaya, Lahoti, & Swaminathan, 2014).…”

“…poverty condition of all individuals belonging to the household (Espinoza-Delgado & Klasen, 2018). Such an assumption, however, disregards intra-household inequalities that are known to exist 5 , and it may also hide inequalities between different generations living in the household (Atkinson, Cantillon, Marlier, & Nolan, 2002), leading thus to biased estimates of poverty and inequality in society (Deaton, 1997;Espinoza-Delgado & Klasen, 2018;Rodríguez, 2016).…”

“…poverty condition of all individuals belonging to the household (Espinoza-Delgado & Klasen, 2018). Such an assumption, however, disregards intra-household inequalities that are known to exist 5 , and it may also hide inequalities between different generations living in the household (Atkinson, Cantillon, Marlier, & Nolan, 2002), leading thus to biased estimates of poverty and inequality in society (Deaton, 1997;Espinoza-Delgado & Klasen, 2018;Rodríguez, 2016). Given that the ultimate objective of poverty analysis is the welfare of individuals (Chiappori, 2016) and that poverty is a characteristic of individuals, not households (Deaton, 1997), limiting the empirical analysis to the household level "is simply unacceptable" (Chiappori, 2016, p. 840).…”

“…It is also worth noting that a gender analysis cannot be conducted by using householdbased multi-dimensional poverty measures that are incapable of revealing gender differences within the household since they are gender-blind (Bessell, 2015;Espinoza-Delgado & Klasen, 2018;Pogge & Wisor, 2016). Gender equality, however, is an objective of global development as well (ECLAC, 2016(ECLAC, , 2018a, as required by Goal 5 of the SDGs ("Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls") (UN, 2015, p. 14).…”