No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Changing Patterns of Wealth Distribution: Evidence from Ghana
Abstract
A largely unexplored feature of structural transformation is the change in the composition of an economy’s asset holdings. In most poor economies, assets are concentrated in land. In rich economies, physical and human capital are more important. This paper focuses on the changes in the composition of household wealth and the share of assets owned by women in Ghana over two decades of relatively rapid growth and significant structural changes. We find that land’s share of household portfolios decreased and the share of financial assets increased. Women’s share of land, savings and business assets rose over the period.
... Since 2000, the SSA has been the world's second-fastest growing regional economy, exceeded only by Asia (Badiane & Makombe, 2015). Women have become considerably more active in labour markets (Diao, Harttgen, et al., 2017) and may be gaining greater influence over household resources in many areas (Oduro & Doss, 2018). Poverty rates have declined significantly for the region as a whole since 2000. 1 Nutritional indicators also show gradual but clear improvement (Masters, Rosenblum, & Alemu, 2018). ...
... Yet other work is starting to illuminate intra-household differences in such impacts. For example, Oduro and Doss (2018) use data from Ghana to show how the changing sectoral composition of labour and output in modernising rural economies corresponds to changes in household assets. Rapid economic growth in Ghana has been accompanied by increasing non-farm orientation of rural households, rising incomes and urbanisation. ...
... Notwithstanding the rapid increased in minerals, oil and gas sector which affected the relative contribution of the agricultural sector of Ghana GDP in recent times [3] agriculture remains important in employment and income generation and livelihood enhancement among the rural poor [4]. An estimated figure of 45 percent of the national work force is been employed in agricultural sector, exceeding any other sector of the economy [5]. ...
... One way to estimate the missing data is to use outcomes of a non-participant group. By using the outcomes of a non-participation farmers, (5) can be rewritten as: ...
e interviewed using questionnaires. Secondary data was also collected for the study and the results analyzed. Simple random sampling techniques was used in selecting respondents. The data was analyzed using appropriate descriptive statistics and Propensity Score Matching (PSM). The study revealed that majority of smallholder participated in the fertilizer subsidy programme. High level of participation in the fertilizer subsidy programme among smallholder farmers can be partly due to high poverty level in Northern region of Ghana. In establishing the relationship between smallholder farmers’ participation in fertilizer subsidy programme and maize income. The propensity scores matching results revealed a significant effect between smallholder farmers’ participation in the fertilizer subsidy programme and maize income of participants. The study calls for more investment and expansion of the subsidy Programme
... Since 2000, the SSA has been the world's second-fastest growing regional economy, exceeded only by Asia (Badiane & Makombe, 2015). Women have become considerably more active in labour markets (Diao, Harttgen, et al., 2017) and may be gaining greater influence over household resources in many areas (Oduro & Doss, 2018). Poverty rates have declined significantly for the region as a whole since 2000. 1 Nutritional indicators also show gradual but clear improvement (Masters, Rosenblum, & Alemu, 2018). ...
... Yet other work is starting to illuminate intra-household differences in such impacts. For example, Oduro and Doss (2018) use data from Ghana to show how the changing sectoral composition of labour and output in modernising rural economies corresponds to changes in household assets. Rapid economic growth in Ghana has been accompanied by increasing non-farm orientation of rural households, rising incomes and urbanisation. ...
Despite the continued deep challenges that the region is facing, mounting evidence points to profound economic transformation in sub-Saharan Africa since the early 2000s. The contributions in this special issue highlight three aspects of Africa’s unfolding economic transformation since 2000: remarkable progress for the region as a whole, highly uneven progress across countries, and unresolved questions about the sustainability of the transformations. The drivers of the region’s economic transformations are diverse, and include improved governance, strong agricultural growth in some countries, employment expansion in informal rural off-farm activities, strong local and foreign investment, a period of high global commodity prices, and policy reforms undertaken in earlier decades. Agricultural growth, by expanding job opportunities in the non-farm sectors through multiplier effects, is likely to remain an important driver of continued transformation, though it will increasingly need to rely on productivity growth rather than area expansion.
... Since 2000, the SSA has been the world's second-fastest growing regional economy, exceeded only by Asia (Badiane & Makombe, 2015). Women have become considerably more active in labour markets (Diao, Harttgen, et al., 2017) and may be gaining greater influence over household resources in many areas (Oduro & Doss, 2018). Poverty rates have declined significantly for the region as a whole since 2000. 1 Nutritional indicators also show gradual but clear improvement (Masters, Rosenblum, & Alemu, 2018). ...
... Yet other work is starting to illuminate intra-household differences in such impacts. For example, Oduro and Doss (2018) use data from Ghana to show how the changing sectoral composition of labour and output in modernising rural economies corresponds to changes in household assets. Rapid economic growth in Ghana has been accompanied by increasing non-farm orientation of rural households, rising incomes and urbanisation. ...
Using nationally representative data from nine countries, we document demographic and employment trends in Africa’s workforce based on full-time labour equivalents (FTE). The FTE approach takes account of individuals’ multiple jobs throughout the year and is therefore likely to give more accurate estimates of the pace of structural transformation. Since 2000, Africa has experienced a sharp decline in the share of its labour force in farming. Because of the seasonal nature of farming, the share of the labour force remaining in farming is substantially lower using the FTE approach than when examined in terms of individuals’ primary sources of employment or total numbers of jobs. Using the FTE approach, the share of the labour force in farming ranges across the nine countries from 35 per cent in Ghana to 54 per cent in Rwanda. Employment in off-farm segments of agri-food systems is expanding rapidly in percentage terms, but in terms of absolute numbers, non-farm activities are by far the major source of employment outside of farming. Contrary to widespread perceptions, the mean age of adults engaged primarily in farming is not rising – in fact it is falling slightly in some countries and remains stable in most others. The pace at which the labour force is shifting out of agriculture is strongly and positively tied to the rate of lagged farm productivity growth. Given the unprecedented growth in the number of young Africans entering the labour market, an effective youth employment strategy in most African countries will rely on massive job expansion, which in turn will rely on the multiplier effects of agricultural productivity growth. Strategies that raise the returns to labour in farming therefore remain crucial for achieving rapid economic transformation and may constitute the core of effective youth employment strategies.
... Despite the rapid increase in the minerals, oil, and gas sectors, agriculture still affect the relative contribution of Ghana's GDP hence the need for its improvement (Dovie et al, 2018). About 45 percent of the national workforce is employed by the agricultural sector, surpassing the rest of the sectors (Oduro et al, 2018). ...
Among the most pressing economic challenges is the government's provision of assistance to the general public. When these benefits are awarded, they have an impact on the economy, and in a developing country like Ghana, it is critical to be able to assess the impact of these programs to determine whether they are worthwhile. This study looked at the factors accounting for participation in the fertilizer subsidy program, as well as the impact that participation has on the output. Primary data was collected from 150 farmers in the Busa Zone using a semi-structured questionnaire and interviews. Descriptive statistics were used to characterize qualitative data, while the Heckman Two-Stage Model was used to determine the factors accounting for participation in the program and the effect of participation in the program on output in the Busa Zone.
Results show that participation in the program was affected by gender, education, land size, the use of improved seeds, sourcing of extension services, access to credit, the purpose of farming which is either for commercial purpose or for subsistence and income levels. The study further went on to reveal that ceteris paribus, participation in the fertilizer subsidy program had a negative effect on output.
The report suggests that Ghana's government take the following steps; reduce the barriers to credit access by farmers with lower levels of education, reduce and timely deliver fertilizers to prevent their misuse by farmers, increase supervision of the use of the subsidized fertilizers on farms, sensitization and increase education to the farmers to understand the complementary nature of the use of improved seeds with fertilizers in other to increase yields. This will reverse the negative relationship connecting participation and output, as well as improve the subsidy program's accessibility, equity, and inclusivity, which the current one in the Busa Zone lacks.
... Accurate information on intra-household asset ownership and control can therefore play an important role in policymaking, including the design of land reforms and initiatives on economic empowerment. Understanding gender differences in asset ownership and wealth, for example, can reveal the extent of economic disadvantage accumulated by women over the life cycle and its inter-generational implications in a stratified social system, providing a longer-term overview of the gender dimensions of economic inequality and vulnerability (Oduro and Doss, 2018;Ruel and Hauser, 2013;Warren, 2006). Additionally, in contexts where formal documentation is limited and local customs determine how land holdings are managed within households and are assigned to individuals, a more disaggregated view of different types of ownership (legal versus economic, for example) and rights (selling or bequeathing, for example) is needed (Kilic and Moylan, 2016;Kang et al., 2020;Slavchevska et al., 2020). ...
Monitoring international goals on land ownership and rights relies fundamentally on the quality of underlying data, which, in the context of surveys, are directly impacted by how respondents are selected. This study leverages two national surveys in Malawi that asked households about household members’ ownership and rights of agricultural land, but which differed in their approach to respondent selection. Compared with the international best practice of privately interviewing adults about their personal asset ownership and rights, the analysis reveals that the business-as-usual approach of interviewing only a most knowledgeable household member on adult members’ ownership and rights of agricultural land leads to (i) a higher share of men claiming exclusive reported and economic ownership, and (ii) a lower share of women claiming joint reported and economic ownership. Using private interviews of spouses’ ownership and rights over the same set of parcels, the analysis also shows that when conflicting claims emerge, proxies for greater household status for women are positively associated with scenarios where women attribute at least some land ownership to themselves.
... Accurate information on intra-household asset ownership and control can therefore play an important role in policymaking, including the design of land reforms and initiatives on economic empowerment. Understanding gender differences in asset ownership and wealth, for example, can reveal the extent of economic disadvantage accumulated by women over the life cycle and its inter-generational implications in a stratified social system, providing a longer-term overview of the gender dimensions of economic inequality and vulnerability (Oduro and Doss, 2018;Ruel and Hauser, 2013;Warren, 2006). Additionally, in contexts where formal documentation is limited and local customs determine how land holdings are managed within households and are assigned to individuals, a more disaggregated view of different types of ownership (legal versus economic, for example) and rights (selling or bequeathing, for example) is needed (Kilic and Moylan, 2016;Kang et al., 2020;Slavchevska et al., 2020). ...
... Girls have experienced significant improvements in primary and secondary education (McArthur & Rasmussen, 2018). Women have become considerably more active in labor markets (Diao et al., 2017) and are better able to hold wealth assets on their own (Oduro & Doss, 2018). Nutritional indicators also show gradual but clear improvement (Masters AU:2 et al., 2018;McArthur & Rasmussen, 2018). ...
... The discussion on asset portfolios, risk management, and risk coping strategies in developing countries largely focuses on the household and household level outcomes. There are a few studies that explore gender differences in asset allocation and accumulation (Antonopoulos & Floro, 2005;Quisumbing, 2010;Oduro & Doss, 2018) and gender differences in the effects of negative household shocks within developing countries (Dercon & Krishnan, 2000;Doss, 2001;Doss, McPeak, & Barrett, 2008). None, however, specifically explore gender differences in risk preferences as reflected in asset allocation decisions. ...
Within a developing country context, little is known about gender differences in risk preferences as reflected in asset allocation decisions. Much of the empirical literature within development studies on risk and investment in assets centers on risk coping and risk management strategies of households. With some exceptions, this literature primarily focuses on household and household-level outcomes. Previous experimental studies have explored gender differences in risk preferences in developing countries with inconclusive results. Using unique national-representative sex-disaggregated data with self-reported asset ownership and wealth information of individuals within households in Ghana from a multi-country project, The Gender Asset Gap Project, this paper explores men and women's risk preferences as reflected in asset allocation decisions through a decomposition method typically used to explore gender differences in wage employment. The study finds that although women hold significantly fewer risky assets than men in absolute terms and as a proportion of their wealth in the sample, men and women do not have systematically different risk preferences. The results in this paper differ from the results in many empirical studies in developed countries, where women are often found to be more risk averse than men. As the first study to look at gender differences in risk aversion in terms of asset allocation with in the developing country context, the results from this study provide evidence that gender differences in risk attitudes may vary by cultural context as the growing experimental literature in developing countries suggests.
It is difficult to study the gender wealth gap because wealth is usually measured at the household level, and men and women often live in the same household. I use person-level measures of wealth, attributing to each person the assets and debts owned in their name, to study the gender wealth gap in the United States among working age people. Using the Survey of Income and Program Participation, I find that the existence of the gender wealth gap is primarily explained by the gender income gap. However, although the gender income gap has narrowed, the gender wealth gap has widened from the mid-1990s to the mid-2010s. This widening occurred across the wealth distribution and among almost every subgroup by marital status, education, race, and age. This widening of the gender wealth gap cannot be explained by changes in socioeconomic characteristics but is consistent with the trend of increasing wealth inequality.
Evidence of how resilience factors mitigate the adverse effects of shocks on individuals, households and communities is clearly established. However, such evidence at the macro level is limited, especially on the pace of structural transformation. This paper explores whether the growing incidence of terrorism, armed conflicts and natural disasters in SSA impeded the pace of structural transformation. We conceptualize the notion of macro-resilience and test whether resilience factors mitigate the adverse effects of shocks on two measures of structural transformation: agriculture’s share of GDP and of national employment. We find that structural transformation is impeded by armed conflict and terrorism-related shocks but not natural disasters and that resilience factors enhance the pace of agricultural transformation. This implies that, while agriculture is often destroyed in conflict-affected areas, the broader impacts are even more negative for other sectors of the economy. However, surprisingly, we find negative or insignificant interaction terms between the shock and resilience variables, implying no mitigative role of resilience capacities. This may suggest, in the case of conflicts and terrorism, the presence of major, debilitating effects which limit the mitigative capacity of resilience factors. We further explore the implications for future research and possible strategies to address the growing threats from shocks.
There is an increasing recognition that the ownership of, access to and control over assets constitute a critical element in the determination of the well-being of households and individuals. Owing largely to data constraints, however, there has been a tendency for studies on assets and well-being/poverty to use the household as the unit of analysis. Such an approach tends to ignore the importance of intra-household disparities in asset ownership and well-being. Moreover, the dearth of individual-level data on asset ownership makes it extremely difficult to analyze gender disparities in asset ownership, wealth and well-being. As rightly noted by Grown et al. (2005), this lack of data seriously hampers efforts to track the progress of countries toward the Millennium Development Goal of gender equality and women’s empowerment.
The project, In Her Name: Measuring the Gender-Asset Gap in Ecuador, India and Ghana, was created in 2009 by an international team of researchers as part of efforts to understand the extent of the gender asset gap in order to effectively redress it. With initial funding from the Dutch Foreign Ministry MDG3 Fund, the project has collected individual-level asset data in these three countries. Extensive qualitative work in each country led to the creation of survey questionnaires that allowed for both international comparisons and the development of comparable measures of the gender asset and gender wealth gaps, while also ensuring that the results would be relevant in the local context to answer policy relevant questions. The surveys were fielded in 2010 to 2011. Data was collected that is nationally representative of Ecuador and Ghana and is representative at the level of the state of Karnataka in India.
This publication presents findings from the Ghana Household Asset Survey conducted in 2010. The data was collected by the Department of Economics of the University of Ghana. The main research questions are:
What are the patterns of asset ownership by men and women?
What is the extent of owners’ rights over their assets and are there gender differences in these rights?
What are the main channels of asset acquisition for men and women?
Is there a relationship between asset ownership and household decision-making
and how does it differ between men and women?
We document a strong positive relationship between natural resource exports and urbanization in a sample of 116 developing nations over the period 1960–2010. In countries that are heavily dependent on resource exports, urbanization appears to be concentrated in “consumption cities” where the economies consist primarily of non-tradable services. These contrast with “production cities” that are more dependent on manufacturing in countries that have industrialized. Consumption cities in resource exporters also appear to perform worse along several measures of welfare. We offer a simple model of structural change that can explain the observed patterns of urbanization and the associated differences in city types. We note that although the development literature often assumes that urbanization is synonymous with industrialization, patterns differ markedly across developing countries. We discuss several possible implications for policy.
A substantial literature exists on household finance in developing countries, but less is known about the borrowing behavior of men and women within households: how much they borrow and for what purpose (e.g, to invest in an asset or pay for an expense), where they borrow from, decisions about taking and using credit, and the correlates of individual debt and particular types of debt (e.g., asset debt). This report addresses these questions in Ecuador, Ghana, and Karnataka, India. Examining individual men and women shows that more men than women hold debt in all three countries, a pattern that holds for asset and expense debt, except for Ghana, where slightly more women than men hold asset debt. In Ecuador, more individuals borrow from formal than informal sector sources, while in Ghana and Karnataka informal sources dominate. Another innovative feature of the analysis is information on who decided to borrow. In Ecuador and Ghana, loans for which a woman is responsible are more likely to have been decided upon by her alone than loans for which a man alone is responsible. However, in Karnataka there is more joint decision-making on loans taken out by individuals. The study also investigates whether the correlates of having asset debt differ for women and men. The factors associated with women’s borrowing for assets in Ecuador and Ghana include being an asset owner, a member of a group, and self-employed, while for men, being in a wealthier household and being an asset owner are positively associated with asset borrowing . These results suggest that wealth may beget wealth.
Lack of clarity behind measurement and interpretation of statistics on gender and land leads to an inability to clearly articulate a policy response to the potential inequalities faced by women and men. This article sets out to explore, conceptually and empirically, the levels and relative inequalities in land rights between women and men in African countries. The first section of the article engages in a conceptual discussion of how to measure gendered-land outcomes, what ownership and control mean in different contexts, and why attention to these factors is important for the development of gender and land statistics. The second section of the article systematically reviews existing evidence from microlevel large sample studies to summarize recent trends in land access, ownership, and control by sex. The third section presents new statistics from a variety of nationally representative and large-scale unpublished data on gender and land in Africa. Results provide not only a nuanced understanding of the importance of measuring land indicators for gendered development in Africa and globally but also new statistics on a variety of land outcomes to aid stakeholders in the discussion of gender-land inequalities.
We use inheritance patterns over three generations of individuals to assess the impact of changes in the Hindu Succession Act that grant daughters equal coparcenary birth rights in joint family property that were denied to daughters in the past. We show that the amendment significantly increased daughters’ likelihood to inherit land, but that even after the amendment, substantial bias persists. Our results also indicate a robust increase in educational attainment of daughters, suggesting an alternative channel of wealth transfer.
The following values have no corresponding Zotero field:
PB - The University of Chicago Press
Women’s ability to accumulate wealth is often attributed to whether they have property rights; i.e., a legal personality to own and manage property. In this paper we argue that basic property rights are insufficient; whether women are able to accumulate wealth also depends upon the marital and inheritance regimes in particular contexts. Drawing upon surveys which collected individual level ownership data in Ecuador, Ghana and the state of Karnataka in India, we estimate married women’s share of couple wealth and relate it to how assets are owned within marriage as well as to different inheritance regimes and practices. In Ecuador, married women own 44 %, in Ghana, 19 %, and in Karnataka, 9 % of couple wealth. Ecuador is characterized by the partial community property regime in marriage while inheritance laws provide for all children, irrespective of sex, to be treated equally, norms that are largely followed in practice. In contrast, Ghana and India are characterized by the separation of property regime which does not recognize wives’ contribution to the formation of marital property, and by inheritance practices that are strongly male biased. Reforming marital and inheritance regimes must remain a top priority if gender economic equality is to be attained.
This paper provides the first analysis of the Global Financial Inclusion (Global Findex) Database, a new set of indicators that measure how adults in 148 economies save, borrow, make payments, and manage risk. The data show that 50 percent of adults worldwide have an account at a formal financial institution, though account penetration varies widely across regions, income groups and individual characteristics. In addition, 22 percent of adults report having saved at a formal financial institution in the past 12 months, and 9 percent report having taken out a new loan from a bank, credit union or microfinance institution in the past year. Although half of adults around the world remain unbanked, at least 35 percent of them report barriers to account use that might be addressed by public policy. Among the most commonly reported barriers are high cost, physical distance, and lack of proper documentation, though there are significant differences across regions andindividual characteristics.
This paper reviews existing microeconomic empirical literature on gender differences in use, access, and adoption of nonland agricultural inputs in developing countries. This review focuses on four key areas: (1) technological resources, (2) natural resources, (3) human resources, and (4) social and political capital. In general, there has been more empirical research on inorganic fertilizer, seed varieties, extension services, and group membership than on tools and mechanization, life-cycle effects, and political participation. Across input areas, generally men have higher input measures than women; however, this finding is often sensitive to the use of models that control for other background factors, as well as the type of gender indicator implemented in the analysis. We find few studies that meet our inclusion criteria outside Sub-Saharan Africa. Finally, future directions, opportunities, and recommendations for microeconomic gender analysis of nonland agricultural inputs are discussed.
Analysis of 2,029 Mexican households reveals that the rural poor can and do save using multiple savings strategies. Female-headed households hold more liquid family consumption assets, such as small animals and grain, and invest more in their homes whereas male-headed households save more in financial and quasi-liquid assets. The family composition including the number of dependents is an important determinant of liquid and total assets. Male-headed households are more likely to increase liquid savings after shocks and utilize financial instruments such as credit and insurance to build assets. Age and remittances are strong determinants of savings in female-headed households. Eastern Economic Journal (2009) 35, 209–231. doi:10.1057/eej.2008.12
Modern historians infrequently acknowledge that women were financial investors before the twentieth century. Yet a study of nineteenth-century England shows substantial groups of women investing for income, capital growth, or a share in the family business. This article will summarize the evidence for women as investors and consider why their participation has been until recently largely ignored by scholars. Second, it will analyze the forms taken by women's investment, exploring the extent to which the development of the stock market and legal changes in married women's property rights facilitated a growing female role in investment. Third, it will analyze the objectives and needs of the three main groups of women investors: speculators, income-seekers, and family investors. The findings have implications for understanding the economic position of women before the First World War and also for contemporary discussion of women's wealth and investment.
Is there a gender asset gap? This article examines the evidence available on the distribution of wealth by gender around the world and asks why we do not know more. One of the contributions of feminist economics has been to demonstrate that household and individual welfare are not necessarily the same. However, relatively little work has been done that disaggregates the ownership of assets within the household to determine how asset distribution affects the gendered pattern of wealth ownership overall or how it impacts household decisions and women's well-being. As an initial step in this project, a number of factors are examined that affect women's ability to accumulate wealth, with emphasis on marital and inheritance regimes. Finally, the myriad ways in which the gender distribution of wealth is important are discussed.
Increasingly, economists are examining how the dynamics within households affect the outcomes of household decisions. This
paper uses data from the 1991/92 and the 1998/99 Ghana Living Standards Surveys to examine how the share of assets owned by
women in Ghanaian households affects household expenditure patterns. In this analysis, assets include business assets, savings,
and farmland. The results indicate that women's share of assets do have an impact on household budget shares for a number
of expenditure categories in each time period. The effects are robust to considering only the share of farmland held by women.
Although the number of households in which women own land is much smaller than the number of households in which women own
assets, the coefficients on the share of household land owned by women is statistically significant in explaining five of
the nine budget categories in each time period. In particular, in both periods, women's share of farmland significantly increased
budget shares on food. Finally, the paper considers the patterns of poverty and asset holdings over this time period.
This paper examines the recent decentralization of governance in Indonesia and its impact on local infrastructure provision. The decentralization of decisionmaking power to local jurisdictions in Indonesia may have improved the matching of public infrastructures provision with local preferences. However, decentralization has made local public infrastructures depend on local resources. Due to differences in initial endowments, this may result in the divergence of local public infrastructures in rich and poor jurisdictions. Using data from village-level panel surveys conducted in 1996, 2000, and 2006, this paper finds that (1) local public infrastructures depend on local resources, (2) decentralization has improved the availability of local public infrastructures, (3) local jurisdictions are converging to a similar level of local public infrastructure, and (4) to some extent, decentralized public infrastructures' provision reflects local preferences.
Drawing upon household surveys in Ecuador, Ghana and Karnataka, India, we analyse the relationship between assets and shocks, distinguishing between asset loss as the shock, and the use of assets as a coping strategy. A greater proportion of households experienced a direct loss of assets due to shocks than as a coping response. In Karnataka, but not in Ghana or Ecuador, women’s assets are more likely to be sold than men’s. Asset ownership and the decision to sell or pawn assets are fairly strongly related but do not completely overlap. Husbands and wives often differ in both the perception of shocks and the response to them.
: If development means the expansion of human capabilities, then freedom from domestic violence should be an integral part of any exercise for evaluating developmental progress. This paper focuses on a hitherto unexplored factor underlying women’s risk of marital violence, namely, women’s property status. Many studies have examined the scale and correlates of marital violence, but neglected this dimension. Based on a household survey in Kerala (India), the authors assess the prevalence and correlates of both physical and psychological violence—long term and current. Women owning immovable property (land or a house) are found to face a significantly lower risk of marital violence than propertyless women. This has implications for development policy.
Studies of gender inequality have usually focused on income, employment and education. This study, drawing on individual-level asset data for Ecuador, Ghana, and Karnataka, India, analyses the patterns of asset ownership between men and women. The gender gaps in assets and wealth differ from country to country depending on the type of asset examined, but generally favour men. In Ghana and Karnataka not only are women less likely to own assets, but they generally own assets that are less valuable, leading to a large gender wealth gap in favour of men. In Ecuador, where joint ownership of property acquired during marriage is the norm, the gender wealth gap is minimal. This study suggests that data on asset ownership is a useful measure of gender inequality and should be collected on a regular basis.
This paper places recent growth and structural transformation in 11 Sub-Saharan African countries in historical and international perspective. During the early post-independence period, resources were reallocated to manufacturing activities with high productivity growth. Structural change stalled in the mid-1970s. When it resumed in the 1990s, workers mainly relocated to distributive trade services. Productivity levels in these activities were higher than in agriculture, enhancing overall economy performance. But services productivity growth was sluggish and increasingly falling behind the world frontier. These patterns are also observed in Latin America, but not in Asia.
Intimate partner violence (IPV) by men against their partners is one of the most glaring indicators of women's lack of empowerment. Drawing upon the 2010 Ecuador Household Asset Survey (EAFF) and the 2010 Ghana Household Asset Survey (GHAS), nationally representative surveys for Ecuador and Ghana, respectively, this study investigates the relationship between women's ownership of assets and physical and emotional abuse by spouses against currently partnered women over the previous twelve months. It uses the value of a woman's total assets compared to those of her partner as the main proxy for a woman's bargaining power. Differentiating between physical and emotional violence in both countries, the study finds that women's share of couple wealth is significantly associated with lower odds of physical violence in Ecuador and emotional violence in Ghana. Moreover, the association between women's share of couple wealth and IPV is contingent on the household's position in the wealth distribution.
A broad consensus has emerged among both policymakers and researchers that strengthening women’s
property rights plays an important role in reducing poverty and achieving equitable growth. Despite the
important role of land in rural livelihoods and as a form of wealth in many Asian cultures, surprisingly
few nationally representative data exist on women’s land rights in Asia. This paucity hinders the
formulation and implementation of appropriate policies to reduce gender gaps in land rights. This paper
reviews the available data on men’s and women’s land rights, identifies what can and cannot be measured
by these data, and uses these measures to assess the gaps in the land rights of women and men. Building
on the conceptual framework developed in 2014 by Doss et al., we utilize nationally representative
individual- and plot-level data from Bangladesh, Tajikistan, Vietnam, and Timor-Leste to calculate five
indicators: incidence of ownership by sex; distribution of ownership by sex; and distribution of plots,
mean plot size, and distribution of land area, all by sex of owner. The results show large gender gaps in
landownership across countries. However, critical data gaps cloud our understanding of land rights and
why women fare better or worse in certain countries. In particular, the limited information on joint and
individual ownership indicates that this is an important area for future data collection and analysis.
The role that domestic violence plays in perpetuating poverty is often overlooked as a development issue. Using data from the 2005 Demographic Health Survey, this paper examines the prevalence of intimate partner violence in Colombia. Employing an intrahousehold bargaining framework and a bivariate probit model, it assesses the prevalence of and risk factors for physical and emotional intimate partner violence, including such variables as income, education, gender-based intrahousehold decision making, employment, migration related to armed conflict and child maltreatment. The findings of the study particularly underscore the effects of early childhood maltreatment on domestic violence and the need for policy measures that span the life cycle and include families. Its recommendations for policy makers and researchers take into consideration practical, theoretical and methodological issues.
Many key development outcomes depend on women's ability to negotiate favorable intrahousehold allocations of resources. Yet it has been difficult to clearly identify which policies can increase women's bargaining power and result in better outcomes. This paper reviews both the analytical frameworks and the empirical evidence on the importance of women's bargaining power. It argues that there is sufficient evidence from rigorous studies to conclude that women's bargaining power does affect outcomes. But in many specific instances, the quantitative evidence cannot rigorously identify causality. In these cases, a combination of quantitative and qualitative evidence may suggest policy levers. Taken together, there are sufficient data in place to support a greatly expanded focus on intrahousehold outcomes and bargaining power. Additional data at the individual level will allow for further and more detailed research. A growing literature supports the current conventional wisdom -- namely, that the patterns of evidence suggest that women's education, incomes, and assets all are important aspects of women's bargaining power.
We illustrate the usefulness of our approach by applying it to the so called Balassa-Samuelson effect, that is, in a cross sectional sense, countries with higher ppp adjusted incomes tend to have higher aggregate price levels (in a common numeraire). We show that as the US economy develops, its aggregate price level increases for two reasons. First, services experienced smaller TFP growth than the other two sectors. Second, the consumption share of services increased. This has the interesting implication that the difference in the aggregate price level between a slow and a fast growing economy should become larger over time. In other words, the Balassa-Samuelson effect should emerge endogenously. This prediction of our work is consistent with the observation that the Balassa-Samuleson effect is a fairly recent phenomenon that has become more pronounced over time.
Women's land rights are increasingly put forth as a means to promote development by empowering women, increasing productivity, and improving welfare. However, little empirical research has evaluated these claims. This paper uses the 2001 Nepal Demographic and Health Survey to explore whether women's land rights empower women and benefit young children's health in Nepal. The results provide support for both of these hypotheses. Women who own land are significantly more likely to have the final say in household decisions, a measure of empowerment. Similarly, children of mothers who own land are significantly less likely to be severely underweight.
Previous research on the nexus of global and local forces suggests that African cities such as Accra and Dar es Salaam are experiencing new forms of settlement. For Accra, the new form has been described as a quality residential sprawl with unicentric tendencies (QRSUT). Demographic and housing data released in Ghana's 2000 population census confirm the emergence of this form. This development is significant to city planners and managers, not just in Accra, but in other African cities. This essay presents demographic and housing evidence supporting the interpretation that a QRSUT has emerged in Accra and discusses developments that have occurred since 1997.
The 2010 Report continues the tradition of pushing the frontiers of development thinking. For the first time since 1990, the Report looks back rigorously at the past several decades and identifies often surprising trends and patterns with important lessons for the future. These varied pathways to human development show that there is no single formula for sustainable progress—and that impressive long-term gains can and have been achieved even without consistent economic growth.
Wealth ownership in the United States has always concentrated in the hands of a small minority of the population. Because of scarce data on wealth ownership, the nature of wealth ownership distribution and knowledge about wealth inequality has received little attention from social scientists. Keister synthesizes theory and data from various sources to present a picture of househould wealth distribution from 1962 to 1995. Utilizing existing survey data and a unique simulation model, she isolates and examines processes that create this distribution, paying particular attention to the wealth ownership and accumulation of top wealth holders, those who control the bulk of household wealth. She identifies trends in wealth mobility that are not possible to estimate with traditional research methods. The results underscore the importance of wealth as an indicator of well-being, identify important causes of wealth inequality, and propose methods of lessening the recent increase in the concentration of wealth.
The 1870 Married Women's Property Act created major change in nineteenth-century British property law. Until the passage of the Act, a husband had legal ownership over his wife's personal property and managerial rights over her real property. The Act granted British women the right to own and control personal property and therefore serves as a natural experiment to test the impact of a legislative change on the distribution of household resources. The article examines whether the Act enabled women to gain a larger share of household resources and alter the distribution of resources within the household. The results indicate that the rights granted to women by the Act dramatically increased the bargaining power and property of wives: wives married after the Act owned a larger share of total household property and invested less of their own income and more of their husband's in forms of property they owned and controlled.
Wealth accumulation has important implications for the relative well-being of households. This article describes how household wealth in the United States varies by gender and family type. Evidence is found of large differences in observed wealth between single-female-headed households and married couples. Although some of this gap reflects differences in observable characteristics correlated with gender and wealth - such as position in the life cycle, education, and family earnings - controlling for these characteristics reduces but does not eliminate the estimated wealth gap. The wealth holdings of single females in the US, controlling for these same characteristics, are also significantly lower than the wealth holdings of single males. In contrast, observed wealth gaps between genders in a sub-sample of young households disappear when controlling for observable characteristics, suggesting either that in the US these gaps are disappearing for younger households or that these gaps do not emerge until later in life.
We introduce a new hybrid approach to joint estimation of Value at Risk (VaR) and Expected Shortfall (ES) for high quantiles of return distributions. We investigate the relative performance of VaR and ES models using daily returns for sixteen stock market indices (eight from developed and eight from emerging markets) prior to and during the 2008 financial crisis. In addition to widely used VaR and ES models, we also study the behavior of conditional and unconditional extreme value (EV) models to generate 99 percent confidence level estimates as well as developing a new loss function that relates tail losses to ES forecasts. Backtesting results show that only our proposed new hybrid and Extreme Value (EV)-based VaR models provide adequate protection in both developed and emerging markets, but that the hybrid approach does this at a significantly lower cost in capital reserves. In ES estimation the hybrid model yields the smallest error statistics surpassing even the EV models, especially in the developed markets.
This article examines the demographic and geographical importance of wealthy middle-class women. It argues that in certain towns and cities, notably London, such women were of sufficient importance to merit attention in their own right. Drawing upon a sample of wills, it describes the types of wealth owned by these women. By examining women's investment in government securities, it argues that women's wealth was of crucial importance to the British state. Its findings challenge conventional understandings of the relationships between gender ideology, wealth holding, and economic development.
Land, labour and the family in Southern Ghana: A critique of land policy under neo-liberalisation
- K S Amanor
Amanor, K. S. (2001). Land, labour and the family in Southern Ghana: A critique of land policy
under neo-liberalisation. (Research Report no.116). Uppasala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet.
Bank of Ghana. (2012, March). Statistical Bulletin. Accra.
Acumulación de Activos: Una apuesta por la equidad
- C D Deere
- J Díaz
Deere, C. D., & Díaz, C. J. (2011). Acumulación de Activos: Una apuesta por la equidad. [Asset
Accumulation: The challenge for equity].
- C Doss
- C Kovarik
- A Peterman
- Q Van Den
- M Bold
Doss, C., Kovarik, C., Peterman, A., A., Q., & van den Bold, M. (2015). Gender inequalities in
ownership and control of land in Africa: Myth and reality. Agricultural Economics,
46(3), 403-434.
Structural transformation in Africa. A historical view (Policy Research Working Paper WPS7743)
- M Enache
- E Ghani
- S Connell
Enache, M., Ghani, E., & O'Connell, S. (2016). Structural Transformation in Africa. A historical
view. (Policy Research Working Paper WPS7743). Washington, DC: World Bank.
Socio-economic and demographic trend analysis
Ghana Statistical Service. (2005). Population data analysis reports. Volume 1. Socio-economic
and demographic trend analysis. Accra.
Ghana Living Standards Survey. Round six (GLSS6)
Ghana Statistical Service. (2014). Ghana Living Standards Survey. Round six (GLSS6). Main
Report. Accra.
Revised 2014 Annual gross domestic product
Ghana Statistical Service. (2015). Revised 2014 Annual gross domestic product. Accra.
Retrieved May 21, 2016, from
http://www.statsghana.gov.gh/docfiles/GDP/GDP2015/Annual_2014_GDP_Rev2_June_
2015%20edition.pdf
Structural change in a poor African country: New historical evidence from Ghana
- R D Osei
- R Jedwab
Osei, R. D., & Jedwab, R. (2017). Structural change in a poor African country: New historical
evidence from Ghana. In M. S. McMillan, D. Rodrick, & C. Sepúlveda (Eds.), Structural
change, fundamentals and growth: A framework and case studies (pp. 161-196).
KHAS: Measuring the gender asset gap. Bangalore: Indian Institute of Management
- H Swaminathan
- J Y Suchitra
- R Lahoti
Swaminathan, H., Suchitra, J. Y., & Lahoti, R. (2011). KHAS: Measuring the gender asset gap.
Bangalore: Indian Institute of Management.
Bangalore: Gender Asset Gap Project
- A D Oduro
- W Baah-Boateng
- L Boakye-Yiadom
Intimate partner violence in Columbia: Who is at risk? Social Forces
- G Friedemann-Sánchez
- R Lovatón
The global findex database 2014: Measuring financial inclusion around the world. (Policy Research Working Paper 7255)
- A Demirguc-Kunt
- L Klapper
- P Singer
- P Oudheusden
Statistical bulletin. Accra
- Ghana Bank Of