Intrahousehold Nutritional Inequities in Rural Bangladesh

Using novel data from rural Bangladesh reporting individual-level food consumption and anthropometric measures, we find substantial inequities in the intrahousehold distribution of calories and nutrients, with male household heads reported to consume disproportionately large shares. There are also smaller body mass index shortfalls for heads relative to their spouses. Further, lower economic well-being and women’s disempowerment are associated with more inequitable calorie distributions. These findings have implications for the measurement of undernourishment, where aggregate household-level data misclassify the undernourishment status of nearly a quarter of the rural Bangladeshi population due to intrahousehold inequities.