It is important to note though that an analysis based on current marital status only captures women as widowed or separated who can ‘afford’ to live on their own. Evidence from West Africa shows that widowed or separated women of reproductive age often remarry, and that only those women who can afford living without a husband remain single (van de Walle 2013; Milazzo and van de Walle 2017; Lambert et al 2017). In addition, DHS sample sizes of some countries do not allow to disaggregate between women who are widowed vs those who are separated or divorced, even though there are potentially important differences between divorce and widowhood (Lambert et al 2017; Djuikom and van de Walle 2018). The DHS for Zambia and Nigeria provide additional information by asking all ever-widowed women (including those who remarried) whether they inherited property from their late husbands. 46 percent of Zambian and 50 percent of Nigerian ever-widowed women report that most the deceased’s property was appropriated by their late husband’s family and/or children.<sup>23</sup> Similar results are reported in Peterman (2012) for additional countries, based on earlier rounds of DHSs. This highlights the precarious situation of widows in many African countries, beyond what can be discerned from a breakdown by current marital status. The analysis is further limited by the fact that DHSs only interview women and men aged 15-49 years, leaving no data on older widows and widowers (i.e. 50+ years). Moreover, given gender differences in life expectancy and spousal age gaps, widowhood is significantly more prevalent for women than for men in our sample. This also implies that gender gaps by marital status (as in Figure 9) are based on uneven proportions of the male vs. female population, and should be interpreted with some caution.

Another demographic cut is between male- and female-headed households, although the concept of ‘headship’ is often not well-defined in household surveys.<sup>24</sup> Since there are comparatively few adult men residing in female headed households, we compare women’s ownership (and not gender gaps) across the two groups.<sup>25</sup>

**Figure 10: Women’s property ownership in male- and female-headed households**

<!-- Start of picture text --> sole ownership of property sole and joint ownership of property<br>Central/Southern Eastern Western Central/Southern Eastern Western<br>female household head male household head female household head male household head<br>TCDNAMLSOCODMWIMOZUGAZMBETHBDIRWATZAKENZWENERCIVGHABFAGINMLIBENSLELBRNGAGMBTGOSEN TCDNAMLSOCODMWIMOZUGAZMBETHBDIRWATZAKENZWENERCIVGHABFAGINMLIBENSLELBRNGAGMBTGOSEN<br>80<br>60<br>60<br>40<br>40<br>20<br>20<br>% of females owning property % of females owning property<br>0 0<br><!-- End of picture text --> _Note:_ Data for 27 countries from 2010-16 (excludes Comoros). Population aged 20-49 years. _Source:_ DHS.

Figure 10 shows the share of women owning property, depending on whether they live in a male- of female-headed households. In Eastern, Central and Southern Africa, women in female-headed households

> 23 These estimates are based on all ever-widowed women included in the survey, irrespectively of age. 24 See Grown (2010; 2014) for a discussion.

> 25 The share of men (20-49 years) residing in female-headed households ranges from 2 percent in Mali to 32 percent in the Comoros, with a population-weighted average of 9 percent. The share of women residing in female-headed households ranges from 8 percent in Mali to 54 percent in Namibia, with a weighted average of 24 percent (see Table A3).

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