it also identified households as areas of inequality while poverty affects households as a whole because of the gender division of labour and responsibilities for household welfare women bear a disproportionate burden attempting to manage household consumption and production under conditions of increasing scarcity united nations paragraph this idea contradicts the many social policies that consider households as benchmarks for homogeneity and harmony this is partly related to the size and dependency ratio of these households which tend to have specific family structures espejo filgueira and rico