# **1.   Introduction**

It is now widely recognized that ownership and control over assets such as land and housing provide direct and indirect benefits to individuals and households, including a secure place to live, the means of a livelihood, protection during emergencies, and collateral for credit that can be used for investment or consumption. Recent studies suggest that assets are important for reducing poverty, and cushioning risk and vulnerability from natural disasters, illness, or financial crises. At the macro level, a growing literature finds that asset equality is positively correlated with economic growth. Asset inequality, combined with market failures, leads to differential productivity between the asset poor and asset rich, which creates poverty and inequality traps (Banerjee and Duflo 2003; Barham et al 1995; Barrett and Carter 2005; Birdsall and Londono 1997; Carter and Zimmerman 2000).

Unfortunately, few studies – either at the micro or macro levels– examine the gender dimensions of asset ownership. One reason why gender is not a prominent part of this literature is lack of empirical information on the distribution of wealth and property by sex. Few surveys actually collect information on individual ownership of land, housing, livestock and other productive assets. Most data on assets is collected at the household level, which gives a misleading or partial picture of individual-level ownership patterns. As a result, researchers and policy makers have only an incomplete understanding of the assets that women own, how they acquire them, and how they use them to influence decisions that affect their own and others’ well-being.

The limited existing information shows that women in many countries are far less likely than men to have ownership or control of productive assets. In addition, women may not receive the benefits of assets held by men, even when they live in the same household (Deere and Doss 2006a). Government policy, social norms, intra-family arrangements, and the market determine ownership and accumulation of assets. Gender biases in each of these different institutions and practices limit women’s ability to obtain and keep assets. In light of current economic and demographic trends, women face greater risk of poverty and economic vulnerability than do men, and women’s lack of asset ownership exacerbates this.

This paper sets out a framework for researchers who are interested in collecting data on individual level asset ownership and analyzing the gender asset gap. The next section highlights the main policy issues and research questions that can be addressed with individual asset data. We show why collecting individual level data on asset ownership is important for understanding poverty reduction, social welfare, and economic growth as well as for constructing an indicator of countries’ progress toward the Millennium Development Goal of gender equality and women’s empowerment (MDG3). The third section summarizes the state of knowledge on the gender asset gap in developing countries, analyzes the legal context with respect to women’s ownership of assets and discusses the channels of asset acquisition.

The fourth section reviews the best practices in existing surveys with respect to data collection on assets at both the household and individual levels. Special emphasis is given to the Living Standard Measurement Study (LSMS) household surveys, but also included in the review of data collection at the individual level are surveys conducted by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW). The 2