Women's legal rights and gender gaps in property ownership in developing countries

Abstract

Women’s property ownership matters for their well-being and agency, broader eco-nomic prosperity, and children’s development. However, until recently, a lack of datahas constrained further exploration of gender differences in property ownership in thedeveloping world. Using data from 41 developing countries, this paper contributes tothe literature by investigating gender gaps in the incidence of property ownershipamong couples and the factors associated with these gaps, focusing on the role of legalsystems. We find that in almost all countries, husbands are more likely to own prop-erty than wives. Across countries in our sample, husbands are, on average, 2.7 timesmore like than wives to own property alone and 1.4 times more likely to own propertyalone or jointly. Within countries, gender gaps in the incidence of property ownershipare most pronounced for disadvantaged groups, that is, the rural population and thepoorest quintile. These gender gaps reflect a variety of factors, including discrimina-tory laws with respect to inheritance, property ownership, marital regimes, and lawsthat protect from workplace discrimination. Countries with more gender egalitarianlegal regimes have higher levels of property ownership by married women, especiallyhousing, suggesting that legal reforms are a potential mechanism to increase women’sproperty ownership.