Much of the analysis conducted as part of the project has used the information from the household roster, which uses proxy respondents for information about other household members. Additional information is available for the two respondents of the individual questionnaire.

The project also collected data on the value of each asset, using three measures of value: the potential sales price, the construction cost (for dwellings), and the rental value. The three project countries differed in the placement of the valuation questions and the respondents for these. In Ecuador, the valuation questions were asked in the household inventory completed by the principal adults of the household (i.e., a couple, or a sole male or female head). The respondents were asked to list all assets owned by a household member and to provide a value for each asset. In Ghana, the valuation questions were only asked in the household inventory and only one person responded to this section. In Karnataka, the valuation questions were asked in the individual questionnaires.

# **3.2 Methodological Experiment on Measuring Assets from a Gender Perspective**

The World Bank Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS), the United Nations Evidence and Data for Gender Equality (EDGE) project<sup>9</sup> and the Uganda Bureau of Statistics collaborated on the design and implementation of the Methodological Experiment on Measuring Asset ownership from a Gender Perspective (MEXA). MEXA was a randomized household survey experiment implemented in 2014 across 140 enumeration areas (EA) in Uganda to test the relative effects of different approaches to respondent selection and questionnaire design on the estimates of ownership of and rights to physical and financial assets. Together with the UN EDGE-supported household surveys implemented in Georgia, Maldives, Mexico, Mongolia, Philippines, and South Africa in 2015-2016, MEXA is informing the international guidelines on individual-level measurement of asset ownership and control that will be submitted by the UN EDGE project to the United Nations Statistical Commission for adoption in 2017 (see Kilic and Moylan (2016) for more details on the design, implementation and analysis of MEXA).

> 9 The EDGE project is executed jointly by the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) and the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN-Women) and seeks to accelerate existing efforts to generate comparable gender indicators on health, education, employment, entrepreneurship, and asset ownership. The project focuses on (i) the development of a platform for international data and metadata compilation covering education, employment and health indicators, (ii) the development of international definitions and methods for measuring gender-disaggregated entrepreneurship and asset ownership, and (iii) testing the newly developed methods in selected countries. These seven household surveys tested different approaches to data collection in an iterative fashion, over the period of 2014-2016, for informing the international guidelines on the measurement of individual-level asset ownership and control. This document was circulated in draft form for comments during the 2017 United Nations Statistical Commission.

9