IS IT BETTER TO BE A BOY? A DISAGGREGATED OUTLAY EQUIVALENT ANALYSIS OF GENDER BIAS IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA

Discrimination in the allocation of goods between boys and girls within households in Papua New Guinea is examined using Deatons (1989) outlay-equivalent ratio method. Adding a boy to the household reduces expenditure on adult goods by as much as would a nine-tenths reduction in total outlay per member, but girls have no effect on adult goods expenditure. The hypothesis of Haddad and Reardon (1993) that gender bias is inversely related to the importance of female labour in agricultural production is not supported. There is no evidence of bias against girls in the urban sector.