The poverty and heterogeneity among female-headed households revisited: The case of Panama

Investigating whether female-headed households (FHHs) are particularly disadvantaged requires more systematic means of comparing poverty than are typically found in past studies. In Panama, while FHHs as a whole appear to be better-off on average, such results are somewhat sensitive to assumptions about economies of scale in household consumption. More disaggregated analysis reveals that particular segments of FHHs, particularly self-reported FHHs with common-law partners living in urban areas, are disadvantaged in both consumption and some nonconsumption dimensions. Thus less systematic analysis could fail to identify such 'pockets of poverty' that might deserve special policy attention. (C) 2000 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.