Insights from LSMS+: Women lag behind in asset ownership and are burdened with domestic work

Agricultural Land Ownership and Rights

Data from: Malawi, Tanzania and Ethiopia

The data from the LSMS+ supported national surveys in Malawi, Tanzania, and Ethiopia reveal that gender differences in reported land ownership are not very different across contexts - because of high levels of joint ownership, as well as matrilineal customs around land inheritance in Malawi. However, women’s rights and decision-making over land are often lower across countries.  These include: rights to sell, bequeath, rent out, use land as collateral, and improve upon the land; different modes of economic ownership where one controls how the proceeds are used if land is sold, and documented ownership; and plot decision-making for agricultural land.

We also found that gender gaps in each of the five core land rights tend to be much greater than gaps in economic ownership or decision-making regarding timing of production activities, crop choice and input use.

What about transfer rights over land?

A technical takeaway from the experts' survey work is that, transfer rights over land, such as the rights to sell, bequeath, rent out and use land as collateral, can be used to effectively categorize landowners into three robust clusters: no rights, mostly exclusive rights, and mostly joint rights. This method can streamline future survey questionnaire design and analysis.

Learn more: New insights on gender differences in land rights in Sub-Saharan Africa

Ownership of other assets

Data from: Cambodia, Malawi, Tanzania and Ethiopia

Time Use

Data from: Cambodia

In the Cambodia LSMS+ survey, men and women were asked to respond a 24-hour recall-based time use module which enables us to capture gender differences in productive versus reproductive labor. Findings show that:

• Compared to men, women spend nearly 3 hours/day more, on average, in unpaid work, and about 2 hours/day less in labor market/economic activity.

• Both adult men and women are economically active in Cambodia, despite women having high unpaid work burdens.

In terms of gender differences, roughly equal shares of men and women reported being involved in agriculture, but there were wider gender gaps in wage employment.

Learn more: Individual Wealth and Time Use : Evidence from Cambodia

LSMS+ research highlights the importance of respondent selection

Land ownership and employment in Malawi: 

Peer-reviewed research based on the LSMS+ survey data reveals that interviewing a single, “most knowledgeable” respondent as a proxy for the rest of the household leads to biased measurement of individual’s asset ownership and employment outcomes. For instance, compared with the international best practice of privately interviewing adults about their personal asset ownership and rights, the analysis reveals that 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.

Learn more: Getting the Gender-Disaggregated Lay of the Land: Impact of survey respondent selection on measuring land ownership and rights

Are You Being Asked? Impacts of Respondent Selection on Measuring Employment in Malawi

Wealth inequality:

Individual-level data on wealth reveals greater inequalities within the population as opposed to standard household per capita approaches that can mask unequal intrahousehold allocations of wealth.  Self-reporting on asset ownership and valuation leads to higher wealth inequality estimates than interviewing a single, "most knowledgeable" respondent.

Learn more: Individual Wealth Inequality : Measurement and Evidence from Low- and Middle-Income Countries