A Note on the Analysis of Female Headed Households in Developing Countries

In this paper, we will attempt to clarify some issues commonly found in recent discussions surrounding female headship analysis, in general, and will also discuss recent literature on the relationship between female headship and poverty, in particular. The issues addressed here include: the confusion between female headship analysis and gender analysis of poverty; the existence of alternative definitions of household headship; and the existence of different analytical purposes of using the concept of household headship and the need for using appropriate headship definitions for each purpose.