Household budgets and women's incomes

Abstract

While explaining proposed studies of aspects of "household economics" to prospective informants in two different African societies, I have been advised very quickly that "Among us, a man and his wife do not share the same purse, and that "Over here, we have a men's side and a women's side. This paper explores some of the problems of applying a "household" methodology to the study of African rural economies. It focuses on one type of household study, namely budget analysis, and suggests that the classic assumption of the household as an undifferentiated decision-making unit applies poorly to many African kinship systems. The first part of the paper is a brief discussion of household methodology and its application to Africa. The second part is devoted to an analysis of the relationship between men's and women's incomes in the rural economy of the Beti of Southern Cameroun.