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The use of female-headship to identify vulnerable subgroups and to direct poverty-alleviation policies is a contentious issue. We demonstrate the importance of heterogeneity in household structures for establishing clearer links between female-headship and household income. Using data from Zimbabwe and South Africa, we find that female-headed households, as a whole, do not have lower incomes than male-headed households. Income differentials across female-headed households are significantly related to the amount of adult male presence, and its complementarity with children living in the households. Even after accounting for these sources of observed heterogeneity, we still find significant unexplained heterogeneity across female-headed households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper estimates the distribution of educational returns by gender for India. While previous studies focus on mean returns, the variance of educational returns has important implications for policy-making and micro-level decision making with respect to education. If the variance of educational returns is large, it can leave large sections of the population with negative returns; if the variance of educational returns is gender specific, it can influence households’ decisions to educate girls versus boys. Our econometric results provide evidence that India''s labor markets are characterized by significant uncertainty and that the uncertainty is systematically larger for women. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]