WUNRN
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+