Are female-headed households time poor? Evidence from Jamaica

The Survey of Living Conditions (SLC) is an annual household survey that is used to monitor poverty and identify vulnerable groups in Jamaica. Welfare of households is measured by per capita household consumption expenditures, which is justified on both theoretical and practical grounds. However this welfare measure ignores the consumption of leisure, and if the poor work longer hours in order to achieve the same level of goods consumption, then consumption based measures of welfare will overstate the welfare of the poor, and understate the welfare of the rich. This paper estimates leisure consump tion from the 1993 SLC to see if female-headed households (FHHs), a vulner able group in Jamaican society, are 'time poor'. The results indicate that the consumption based measure of welfare used in the SLC does not bias the estimated welfare of FHHs relative to their male counterparts. There is virtu ally no change in two commonly used poverty indexes (the headcount and the poverty gap) for FHHs when leisure is included in total consumption.