note that “..an important way in which poverty is feminized is that male-dominated societies make the escape from poverty harder for women. This suggests that poverty is more likely to be chronic for women and transient for men” (Lipton and Ravallion, 1995, p. 2590). Empirical analysis of poverty dynamics shows that household head’s education, household demographics and average wealth are important determinants of chronic poverty (Jalan and Ravallion 1998; Baulch and Hoddinott 2000).<sup>22</sup> Few studies of poverty dynamics and determinants of chronic poverty examine female-headed households separately from male-headed households, so it is difficult to generalize findings. To the extent that female household heads tend to have less education and their households contain a higher proportion of dependents, their households are more likely to be chronically poor than male headed households. Studies that include a dummy for sex of the household head among the determinants of chronic and transient poverty find some evidence that this variable matters in addition to human capital and average wealth of the household. For example, using panel data from Uganda, Lawson, Mckay and Okidi (2006) find that female headship is associated with higher likelihood of being chronically poor.

# **9. Gender equality and economic growth**

# _Theory and cross-country patterns_

Gender equality potentially affects economic growth through various channels. A first potential link is via increased quality of human capital inputs, which is reflected in the increased productivity of labor and other complementary inputs to the production process. Many studies have noted that the marginal returns to schooling for women frequently exceed those for men (Schultz, 2002; DFID, 2007); this suggests that the growth impacts of education for girls may be greater than the impact for boys. A second potential link is via increased efficiency in the allocation of different inputs. If—as is likely—barriers to women’s employment in certain sectors or occupations prevent labor from being put to its most productive use, allocative inefficiency results. A similar inefficiency results if land, capital and other productive inputs are allocated on the basis of non-economic criteria that reflect culturally- or legally-sanctioned discrimination against women. A third link may between gender equality and growth may be via differential marginal propensities to save, although the empirical evidence on this score is relatively weak.<sup>23</sup> Seguino and Floro (2003) and Stotsky (2006) note that women may have greater incentives to save than men, reflecting: i) women’s role as “principal home builders” (Slotzky’s term); ii) the fact that men may have greater recourse to social insurance, thus reducing the need to save in order to smooth consumption expenditures; and iii) women’s stronger bequest motives and intergenerational altruism. Seguino and Floro (2003), in a crosscountry panel study of semi-industrialized countries, find that an increase in women’s wage share relative to men is associated with increase in the domestic savings rate.

> 22 Barrientos, Hulme and Shepherd (2005) identify three main empirical approaches to measuring chronic poverty in literature: (i) the consumption shortfall approach of Jalan and Ravallion (1998) where a household is considered to be chronically poor if its constant or permanent consumption is at or below the poverty line; (ii) the duration approach where a chronically poor household is one whose per capita consumption is at or below the poverty line at each or most observation points (Baulch and Hoddinott 2000); (ii) the probability of deficient future consumption approach (Chaudhuri 2003).

> 23 A recent review by Stotsky finds only four studies (Goetz and Gupta, 1996; Seguino and Floro, 2003; Floro, 2001; and Razavi, 1996); results are not consistent across all four studies.

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