fit local particularities) and collecting the same data across countries as well as that of collecting interesting demographic information. When using the DHSs, we define the household exclusive of non-resident visitors and adults as those aged 15 and above. The dependency ratio is given by the number of household members younger than 15 and over 65 to the number of members aged 15 to 64. We will sometimes refer both to the share of FHHs and to the share of the population living in FHHs. When we examine changes in the share of the population living in FHHs in Section 5, a number of explanatory variables come from sources other than the DHS. The variables and their sources are described in Appendix Table A1.

To complement the DHS-based analysis, the paper employs a second set of surveys, namely the harmonized household consumption survey data base compiled by the World Bank expressly for the purpose of making sound comparisons across countries for Africa. We use these to examine changes in consumption poverty over the last 20 years or so. In particular, we explore changes in the headcount index of poverty calculated based on household per capita consumption expenditures, for male and female headed households separately using common measures and methods across all countries. The consumption data are converted to real (country CPI adjusted) 2005 PPP and we use the international poverty line of $1.25 at PPP (Ravallion et al. 2009).<sup>12</sup> We also test the sensitivity of the results to dividing household consumption by the square root of household size, to allow for the generally smaller size of FHHs and economies of scale in consumption.<sup>13</sup> We have a total of 24 countries—accounting for approximately 80% of Africa’s current population—for which there are at least two surveys that have been deemed fully comparable and can be used to measure changes in poverty.<sup>14</sup> In three cases, there are two spells of comparable surveys for the same country. We thus examine a total of 27 spells. The included countries and survey dates are listed in Table 6. The resulting poverty measures are then used to examine changes in poverty and implement a decomposition of the contribution of FHHs and MHHs to the overall changes in each country. For the analysis using the consumption surveys, we define adults as 18 and above.

Rather than impose our own definition of when a household is female headed as some of the literature has done, headship self-reports are taken as given. But structure is imposed by

> 12 At the time of writing it was unclear what exactly the equivalent poverty line would be when using the newly released 2011 PPP, although it would be roughly $1.85. Note, however, that different PPPs do not affect comparisons within country, which is our sole focus here.

> 13 In this case, we adjust the poverty line to $2.80/day equivalent to the $1.25 when switching to the square root scale and using a pivot point of N=5 (Ravallion 2015).

> 14 Comparability was defined based on the consumption module and design of the survey. The specific criteria were: same months of survey; similar survey design; diary/recall consistency; and nationally representative.

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