The paper reviews recent theory and empirical evidence testing unitary versus collective models of the household. In contrast to the unitary model, the collective model posits that individuals within households have different preferences and do not pool their income. Using new household data sets from Bangladesh, Indonesia, Ethiopia, and South Africa, we present measures of individual characteristics which are highly correlated with bargaining power, namely human capital and individually-controlled assets, evaluated at the time of marriage. In all our country case studes, we reject the unitary model as a description of household behavior. Preliminary results suggest that assets controlled by women have a positive and significant effect on expenditure allocations towards the next generation, such as education and children's clothing.
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