How serious is the neglect of intrahousehold inequality ?

In this report the authors develop a framework for assessing the consequences of ignoring intrahousehold inequality in the measurement and analysis of poverty and inequality. They apply this framework to data for the Philippines and conclude that : 1) the result of neglecting intrahousehold inequality will probably be considerable understatement of the levels of poverty and inequality. With the Philippine data, measured levels of inequality and poverty were off 30 percent as a result of ignoring intrahousehold variation, and 2) patterns of inequality revealed by household level data are somewhat different from patterns revealed by individual level data, but the differences seem not to be dramatic. To confirm these results, the exercise should be repeated with data from other countries.