Household Resource Allocation in the Côte d’Ivoire: Inferences from Expenditure Data

The ultimate goal of rural development policies is to raise the living standards of individuals. Their success in this regard is a function of their design and implementation, issues discussed in the Introduction to this volume. But the technical aspects of policy intervention are not the sole determinants of success. The vast majority of individuals in developing countries reside in multi-member households and the efficacy of policies targeted towards individuals will partly depend on how the household, acting as an intermediary between policies and individuals, (re)allocates resources in response to it.