IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wbrwps/9987.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Individual Wealth Inequality : Measurement and Evidence from Low- and Middle-Income Countries

Author

Listed:
  • Hasanbasri,Ardina Roosiany
  • Kilic,Talip
  • Koolwal,Gayatri B.
  • Moylan,Heather G.

Abstract

The accumulation of personal wealth, stemming from ownership and control of assets, plays acritical role in advancing women’s and men’s economic opportunities. Yet, it is an understudied dimension ofinequality across the developing world. To study individual-level wealth inequality and gender differences inwealth, this paper leverages unique data from nationally representative, multi-topic household surveys that wereconducted in Cambodia, Ethiopia, Malawi, and Tanzania and that interviewed men and women in private regarding theirpersonal ownership and valuation of physical and financial assets. The analysis documents substantial genderinequalities in asset ownership and wealth, overall and for specific asset classes. Individual-level wealth inequalitymeasures are substantially higher vis-à-vis comparators based on per capita household consumption expenditures andper capita household wealth, and intrahousehold wealth inequality has a substantial role in explaining overallwealth inequality. While land is a key contributor to wealth inequality across countries, there is cross-countryheterogeneity in the relative contributions of asset classes. Self-reporting on asset ownership and valuation,the internationally-recommended best practice, is also shown to lead to higher inequality estimates compared to thebusiness-as-usual survey practice of interviewing a single, most-knowledgeable household member to identifyintrahousehold asset owners and values. The discussion expands on the implications of the findings for futuresurveys and methodological research.

Suggested Citation

  • Hasanbasri,Ardina Roosiany & Kilic,Talip & Koolwal,Gayatri B. & Moylan,Heather G., 2022. "Individual Wealth Inequality : Measurement and Evidence from Low- and Middle-Income Countries," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9987, The World Bank.
    • Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:9987
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099346003292213477/pdf/IDU0f433d9e7084a0046e20a4df00f12c7e352b4.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kilic, Talip & Moylan, Heather & Koolwal, Gayatri, 2021. "Getting the (Gender-Disaggregated) lay of the land: Impact of survey respondent selection on measuring land ownership and rights," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    2. Cheryl Doss, 2013. "Intrahousehold Bargaining and Resource Allocation in Developing Countries-super-1," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 28(1), pages 52-78, February.
    3. Philippe De Vreyer & Sylvie Lambert, 2021. "Inequality, Poverty, and the Intra-Household Allocation of Consumption in Senegal," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 35(2), pages 414-435.
    4. Boyer, Marcel, 2020. "Inequalities: Income, Wealth and consumption," TSE Working Papers 20-1105, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    5. Gabriel Zucman, 2019. "Global Wealth Inequality," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 11(1), pages 109-138, August.
    6. Quisumbing, Agnes R. & Estudillo, Jonna P. & Otsuka, Keijiro, 2004. "Land and schooling: transferring wealth across generations," Food policy statements 41, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    7. Bose-Duker,Theophiline & Gaddis,Isis & Kilic,Talip & Lechene,Valérie & Pendakur,Krishna, 2021. "Diamonds in the Rough? : Repurposing Multi-Topic Surveys to Estimate Individual-Level Consumption Poverty," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9661, The World Bank.
    8. Haddad, Lawrence & Kanbur, Ravi, 1990. "How Serious Is the Neglect of Intra-Household Inequality?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 100(402), pages 866-881, September.
    9. Cheryl Doss & Caitlin Kieran & Talip Kilic, 2020. "Measuring Ownership, Control, and Use of Assets," Feminist Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(3), pages 144-168, July.
    10. Wenli Cheng & Nan Zhou & Longyao Zhang, 2021. "How does land titling affect credit demand, supply, access, and rationing: Evidence from China," Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics/Revue canadienne d'agroeconomie, Canadian Agricultural Economics Society/Societe canadienne d'agroeconomie, vol. 69(3), pages 383-414, September.
    11. Doss, Cheryl, 2013. "Intrahousehold bargaining and resource allocation in developing countries," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6337, The World Bank.
    12. Mariola Acosta & Margit van Wessel & Severine van Bommel & Edidah L. Ampaire & Jennifer Twyman & Laurence Jassogne & Peter H. Feindt, 2020. "What does it Mean to Make a ‘Joint’ Decision? Unpacking Intra-household Decision Making in Agriculture: Implications for Policy and Practice," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 56(6), pages 1210-1229, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kerr,Andrew Nicholas & Zondi,Mxolisi, 2024. "Measuring the Upper Tail of the Income and Wealth Distributions," Policy Research Working Paper Series 10836, The World Bank.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Isabel Brigitte Lambrecht & Kristi Mahrt & Nang Lun Kham Synt & Hnin Ei Win & Khin Zin Win, 2023. "Gender gaps in land rights: Explaining different measures and why households differ in Myanmar," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 54(5), pages 728-741, September.
    2. Hasanbasri,Ardina Roosiany & Kilic,Talip & Koolwal,Gayatri B. & Moylan,Heather G., 2021. "Individual Wealth and Time Use : Evidence from Cambodia," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9765, The World Bank.
    3. Wilman J. Iglesias & Alexandre B. Coelho, 2020. "Poverty and inequality within Brazilian households: an application of a collective consumption model," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 58(4), pages 1923-1952, April.
    4. Kilic, Talip & Moylan, Heather & Koolwal, Gayatri, 2021. "Getting the (Gender-Disaggregated) lay of the land: Impact of survey respondent selection on measuring land ownership and rights," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    5. Euler, Michael & Jaleta, Moti & Gartaula, Hom, 2024. "Associations between women’s bargaining power and the adoption of rust-resistant wheat varieties in Ethiopia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 178(C).
    6. Wilman Javier Iglesias Pinedo & Alexandre Bragança Coelho, 2018. "Using A Collective Model To Evaluate Intra-Household Inequality And Individual Poverty In Brazil," Anais do XLIV Encontro Nacional de Economia [Proceedings of the 44th Brazilian Economics Meeting] 131, ANPEC - Associação Nacional dos Centros de Pós-Graduação em Economia [Brazilian Association of Graduate Programs in Economics].
    7. Ardina Hasanbasri & Talip Kilic & Gayatri Koolwal & Heather Moylan, 2023. "Multidimensionality of Landownership among Men and Women in Sub-Saharan Africa," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 66(3), pages 581-608.
    8. Gourlay,Sydney & Maggio,Giuseppe & Safyan,Anahit & Zezza,Alberto, 2022. "Measuring Land Tenure at the Individual Level : Lessons from Methodological Research in Armenia," Policy Research Working Paper Series 10140, The World Bank.
    9. Donni, Olivier & Molina, José Alberto, 2018. "Household Collective Models: Three Decades of Theoretical Contributions and Empirical Evidence," IZA Discussion Papers 11915, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Rao, Nitya, 2017. "Assets, Agency and Legitimacy: Towards a Relational Understanding of Gender Equality Policy and Practice," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 43-54.
    11. Astrid Sneyers & Anneleen Vandeplas, 2013. "Girl Power in Agricultural Production: How Much Does it Yield? A Case-Study on the Dairy Sector in India," Working Papers id:5562, eSocialSciences.
    12. Asiedu, Elizabeth & Azomahou, Théophile T. & Getachew, Yoseph & Yitbarek, Eleni, 2021. "Share the love: Parental bias, women empowerment and intergenerational mobility," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 191(C), pages 846-867.
    13. Anne Jerneck, 2018. "What about Gender in Climate Change? Twelve Feminist Lessons from Development," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(3), pages 1-20, February.
    14. Han, Wenjing & Zhang, Xiaoling & Zhang, Zhengfeng, 2019. "The role of land tenure security in promoting rural women’s empowerment: Empirical evidence from rural China," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 280-289.
    15. Robert A. Pollak, 2016. "Marriage Market Equilibrium," NBER Working Papers 22309, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Rama Lionel Ngenzebuke & Bram De Rock & Philip Verwimp, 2018. "The power of the family: kinship and intra-household decision making in rural Burundi," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 16(2), pages 323-346, June.
    17. Cheryl R. Doss & Agnes R. Quisumbing, 2020. "Understanding rural household behavior: Beyond Boserup and Becker," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 51(1), pages 47-58, January.
    18. Valérie Lechene & Krishna Pendakur & Alexander Wolf, 2019. "OLS estimation of the intra-household distribution of consumption," IFS Working Papers W19/19, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    19. Hanrui Jia & Peng Zhan, 2021. "Intra‐family Income Redistribution and Its Dynamic Changes among the Elderly in China: 2002–2018," China & World Economy, Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, vol. 29(5), pages 84-104, September.
    20. Raymond B. Frempong & David Stadelmann, 2017. "Does Female Education have a Bargaining Effect on Household Welfare? Evidence from Ghana and Uganda," CREMA Working Paper Series 2017-08, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:9987. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Roula I. Yazigi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dvewbus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.