Determinants of Intra-Household Gender Bias: Evidence from Timor-Leste

Household bargaining models indicate that girls' access to resources does not depend solely on household income, but also on a number of factors that affect women's bargaining power. Data describing the allocation of resources within households is rare, prompting the development of inferential methods. Using a methodology that only requires household-level expenditure data, we analyze intra-household resource allocation in Timor-Leste. While the results do not support the hypothesis that allocation is biassed towards boys in the full population we find, in subpopulations where women are likely to have less bargaining power, substantial anti-girl bias.