WUNRN

http://www.wunrn.com

 

UNDP Asia-Pacific Regional Centre - Gender & Macroeconomic GEM Issues in Asia & the Pacific Newsletter - January 2012

 

GENDER ASSET & WEALTH GAP

Dr. Caren Grown

Women and men own all types of physical and financial assets, from houses to livestock to mobile phones to savings but the incidence of asset ownership varies by sex due to enabling or constraining social, economic, and institu-tional factors. The gender asset gap is linked to the types of assets and the value of the assets that different households own. The gender asset gap is highest in the wealthiest quintiles and lowest in the poorest quintiles, and composition of assets owned by the poorest households is less diversified than those owned by richer households. Collecting asset data at the individual level can shed light on the complexity of the gender asset and wealth gaps.

Dr. Caren Grown, Senior Gender Advisor in the Bureau of Policy, Planning and learning of USAID and Econo-mist-In-Residence at American University, U.S.A (currently on leave), presented the preliminary findings from the Global Gender Asset Gap Project in the seminar entitled "The global Asset and Wealth Gap: New Evidence and Next Steps."

The Gender Asset Gap Project is a joint initiative of an international research team formed in 2009. Grown’s earlier involvement with the UN Millennium Project and her review, with Cheryl Doss and Carmen Diana Deere, of World Bank Living Standards of Measurement Study (LSMS) questionnaires influenced the Project design. Under the Millennium Project, property ownership was identified as one of seven strategic priorities for meeting MDG, and the female share of land and housing was recommended as a new indicator to strengthen monitoring pro-gress toward the Goal.

A new handbook The need for Gender Respon-sive Budgeting – why we should adopt it and how was published as a result of the Workshop on Gender Responsive Budgeting (GRB) held in Penang, Malaysia in February 2011. Workshop participants includ-ed representatives from the Good Governance and Gender Equality Society, Penang (3Gs) and the Women’s Development Research Centre (KANITA) of Universiti Sains Malaysia and other research organizations, the Penang State Government, the Penang Island Municipal Council (MPPP), the Seberang Perai Municipal Council (MPSP), and other Malaysian State Governments and civil society organizations and institutions.

[Yet, sex-disaggregated asset ownership is impossible to obtain since most asset data are collected at the household level. The Doss-Grown-Deere review of LSMS questionnaires resulted in the three authors developing an innovative instrument to collect individual level data on all forms of physical and financial assets.

Hema Swaminathan from the Indian In-stitute of Management and Abena Oduro from the University of Ghana teamed up with Grown, Doss, and Deere. Together they obtained funding from the Dutch Government through the MDG3 Fund to collect individual-level data on all forms of financial and physical assets that was nationally representative in Ecuador and Ghana and representative of the state of Karnataka, India. Socio-economic data were also collected in order to analyze the linkage between asset ownership and outcome measures in terms of consumption ex-penditure, wealth, and empowerment.

Assets are important to individuals and households as they generate income, enable access to capital, create inter-generational transfers of wealth and ownership, and reduce vulnerability against various types of shocks. In order to analyze such linkages, Gender Asset Gap survey asked different questions than those generally asked in conventional household surveys.

The Project was also unique in that it did not use the notion of a household head. Different countries have different definitions regarding the head of household. Therefore, the survey aimed to interview at least two people within a household, a principal male and female who were the primary owners of assets. The interview was undertaken separately for men and women as many don’t want to reveal details of the assets – especially financial assets – that they own, in front of other household members. An inventory of all physical and financial assets was conducted with the person most knowledge-able about the assets owned by members of the household, and owner(s) of each asset was identified. The assets in the survey included principal residence, agricultural land, real estate, livestock, farming tools and equipment, consumer durables, and financial assets among others.

The survey also explored multiple defini-tions of ownership; reported ownership (the individual answers that she or he owns the asset), legal ownership (the existence of legal documents, purchase slips, etc.), and transaction rights to sell, mortgage, liquidate the assets.

No common pattern regarding ownership was found across the three surveyed countries. For instance, in India, most houses are reported to be owned by individual males while in Ecuador most hous-es are reported to be owned by the principle couple. Among individuals who report owning houses in Ecuador, more women than men own houses. Institu-tional factors such as marital and inheritance regimes, as well as social factors (e.g., one thirds of the surveyed in Ecuador are unmarried co-habitants) perhaps contributed to the egalitarian incidence of house ownership. Legal literacy on property rights was also much higher among the surveyed in Ecuador. In Ghana, legal ownership of houses was much less than reported ownership.

As for consumer durables, the incidence of asset ownership by sex vary depends on the commodity. For example, the percentage of men who own cell phones was much higher than that of women whilst the opposite holds for jewelries. In terms of the distribution of assets by income quintile, the share of consumer durables in total assets was highest among the poorest households. The richest households are more diversified in the assets they own and they possess higher valued assets. This points us to the need for helping the poor households diversify the type of assets they own.

The same applies for the distribution of asset ownership by sex. Women own more types of assets than is commonly known. However, the gender wealth gap exceeds the gender asset gap for most assets. That is, diversifying the types of assets with access to higher valued assets is crucial for reducing women’s asset poverty and their vulnerability to external shocks such as economic crisis.

As for the distribution of non-farm business ownership, women’s share was higher than expected. In Ecuador, for example, more than half of non-farm business owners are women. However, the distribution of wealth by sex shows that women accounted for less than 30 per cent in terms of the value of those businesses. Women are more concentrated in micro enterprises and do not own high-valued businesses. Women’s economic empowerment projects en-courage the entrepreneurships among women. The findings indicate the need for policymaking and redesigning of the projects for women and entrepreneurship.

These survey results are expected to help national governments track progress to-ward MDG3; and assist policymakers and others to improve women’s claims to productive assets. Efforts are being made with support from donors on building the capacity of national statistics offices in collecting asset poverty data in conjunction with income poverty data at both household and individual levels.

The seminar was co-organized by UNDP Asia-Pacific Regional Centre (APRC) and Gender and Development Studies of Asian Institute of Technology at UNDP APRC, January 30, 2012. It attracted diverse groups of audiences from local academic and research institutes as well as UN agencies.

More information on the project including country reports are available from the project website. The regional synthesis report, policy briefs, best practice manuals, the survey questionnaires, and raw data from the three countries will be available online in coming months.

*Contributed, with thanks, Ms. Fumie Arimizu, Programme Officer, UNDP APRC+