Outlay equivalence analysis of child gender bias in household expenditure data

This article reports the results of an empirical analysis of gender‐based discrimination among children based on household consumption data from Uzbekistan. We employ the outlay equivalence methodology to examine whether the entry of a new child leads to different effects in the decrease of adult good consumption for boys and for girls. We use a semi‐parametric estimation method to address the so‐called ‘zero consumption problem’, the statistical problem that arises because some households have zero consumption on a budget line in the period prior to the survey date. The results indicate that alcohol and tobacco reveal the incidence of discrimination against girls, while other groups of adult goods do not.