Individual Wealth Inequality : Measurement and Evidence from Low- and Middle-Income Countries
The accumulation of personal wealth, stemming from ownership and control of assets, plays a critical role in advancing women’s and men’s economic opportunities. Yet, it is an understudied dimension of inequality across the developing world. To stud...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2022
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099346003292213477/IDU0f433d9e7084a0046e20a4df00f12c7e352b4 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/37249 |
| Summary: | The accumulation of personal wealth,
stemming from ownership and control of assets, plays a
critical role in advancing women’s and men’s economic
opportunities. Yet, it is an understudied dimension of
inequality across the developing world. To study
individual-level wealth inequality and gender differences in
wealth, this paper leverages unique data from nationally
representative, multi-topic household surveys that were
conducted in Cambodia, Ethiopia, Malawi, and Tanzania and
that interviewed men and women in private regarding their
personal ownership and valuation of physical and financial
assets. The analysis documents substantial gender
inequalities in asset ownership and wealth, overall and for
specific asset classes. Individual-level wealth inequality
measures are substantially higher vis-à-vis comparators
based on per capita household consumption expenditures and
per capita household wealth, and intrahousehold wealth
inequality has a substantial role in explaining overall
wealth inequality. While land is a key contributor to wealth
inequality across countries, there is cross-country
heterogeneity in the relative contributions of asset
classes. Self-reporting on asset ownership and valuation,
the internationally-recommended best practice, is also shown
to lead to higher inequality estimates compared to the
business-as-usual survey practice of interviewing a single,
most-knowledgeable household member to identify
intrahousehold asset owners and values. The discussion
expands on the implications of the findings for future
surveys and methodological research. |
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