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

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.