To test the robustness of our results to different specifications, we analyze the determinants of women’s ownership of property using a multinomial regression model. The dependent variable has three categories - no one in the household owns the asset, the husband owns the asset alone or jointly with someone else (but not the wife) and the wife owns the asset alone or jointly with someone else (including her husband). The results are qualitatively similar (Table A5) to the results from the LPM model. Women in countries with more egalitarian laws are more likely to own property than women in countries with less egalitarian laws. The impact is stronger for housing than for land. Even the magnitude of estimates is similar as in the LPM models. Egalitarian laws reduce the probability of no one in the household owning land, but this is not consistently significant across models. The impact of laws on husbands’ chances of owning property is either insignificant or negative across models, except for equal remuneration laws in rural areas which increase husbands' chances of owning land significantly.

# **5. Conclusions**

This paper investigates the extent of gender gaps in the incidence of property ownership (land and housing) and the factors associated with these gaps in developing countries, focusing on the role of legal systems. Using DHS data from 41 developing countries, we find that there is substantial variation in gender gaps across countries. However, in almost all countries men are more likely to own property than women and gender gaps are most prominent among the rural population and the poorest quintile. There is significant evidence from the existing literature that women’s disadvantage in property ownership limits their bargaining power within the marriage and their fallback options on the dissolution of marriage or on the death of the husband.

The disadvantage in property ownership experienced by women reflects a variety of factors, most importantly discriminatory property laws. Countries with more equal legal regimes for women are associated with higher property ownership by women. The relationship between the legislation and women’s property ownership holds across rural and urban areas and is stronger for housing than for land ownership. Our results further suggest that equal rights to own property and laws providing for the valuation of non-monetary contributions may matter more for married women’s property ownership than inheritance rights and laws mandating equal remuneration for equal work. Even though we have controlled for a range of country-level and individual characteristics in our model, some of the association between laws and women's property ownership might capture omitted variables that are also positively associated with egalitarian laws. Egalitarian laws come up by a process of advocacy by groups or social movements demanding these rights and a certain level of acceptance of rights by the society. Thus, the association between egalitarian laws and women’s property ownership observed here is a culmination of the process that results in making laws and changing gender norms in society.

The results in this paper are consistent with recent studies showing that legislative reforms can affect women’s property ownership. For example, Deininger et al (2013, 2018) argue that inheritance reforms in India, which removed discriminatory provisions against girls, had a positive effect on the likelihood of daughters to inherit land and increased the amount of assets (including land) daughters brought into marriage.<sup>12</sup> Likewise, impact evaluation studies show that land

> 12 Roy (2015), however, argues that the reforms of the Hindu Succession Act failed to increase the likelihood of women inheriting property as parents appear to be ‘gifting’ land to their sons in order to circumvent the law.

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