Researchers from the World Bank, IFPRI, and partner institutions convened for a MAGNET webinar to present new survey tools designed to improve how asset ownership, control, and benefits are measured in household surveys. The webinar showcased five new tools developed under the MAGNET initiative and highlighted how they can strengthen evidence on women’s economic agency.
Talip Kilic (World Bank) opened the seminar by framing the MAGNET asset tools within more than a decade of work on improving the measurement of asset ownership. Drawing on his experience with LSMS and the early development of the MAGNET initiative, he highlighted a persistent challenge in survey work: accurately capturing who owns, controls, and benefits from assets within households. He emphasized that the new tools move beyond surface-level indicators to provide more nuanced, scalable measures that can be adopted by national statistical offices, underscoring that better measurement of asset ownership and control is foundational — not merely technical — for advancing women’s economic empowerment and informing policy.
Heather Moylan (World Bank) and Ardina Hasanbasri (Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs) presented their paper ‘Multidimensionality of Landownership among Men and Women in Sub-Saharan Africa’ (co-authored with Cheryl Doss, Marya Hillesland, and Maria Hernández de Benito). They highlighted limitations of standard surveys, which often rely on a single respondent and narrow definitions of ownership, overlooking jointness, preferences, and how asset rights evolve over time. To address these gaps, they developed five new tools — four vignette-based and one scale-based. The vignettes examine (1) preferences for joint versus exclusive ownership, (2) asset division following marital dissolution, (3) whether ownership implies control and required permissions, and (4) control over jointly owned assets by mode of acquisition. The fifth tool, the Control and Benefits over Assets Scale, captures multiple dimensions of control and economic benefits. The tools were validated through a rigorous three-phase process: (i) expert-led tool design to capture content validity; (ii) multi-country pilots to assess comprehension, relevance, and adaptability; and (iii) analysis of pilot data to test construct validity, structural validity, and internal reliability. Respondents demonstrated consistently high comprehension rates and strong cross-country consistency. Findings across tools demonstrated that asset ownership is inherently multidimensional: ownership alone does not guarantee control or benefits, joint ownership does not imply equal rights, and women do not universally prefer exclusive ownership.
Agnes Quisumbing (IFPRI) served as the discussant, reflecting on how the MAGNET asset tools provide a flexible framework for analyzing the multiple dimensions of asset ownership, control, and use, emphasizing that these concepts are distinct and highly context specific. She noted that the tools were piloted mainly in Africa and India, but also stressed that limited geographic coverage should not deter their use, encouraging researchers to adapt them, learn through scaling, and share lessons with the broader community of practice. She highlighted the complexity of measuring joint ownership, underscoring the need for careful probing of acquisition, asset type, and quantity, and cautioned against assuming joint ownership implies equal rights. Quisumbing also called for greater attention to the enforceability of rights, including outcomes following marital dissolution, inheritance, widowhood, and child custody, and strongly endorsed MAGNET’s Control and Benefits over Assets Scale for its clarity, policy relevance, and suitability for large surveys, while suggesting future work on transparent aggregation methods.
Across tools, the findings underscored important survey design and policy implications. Asset ownership is multidimensional: ownership alone does not guarantee control or benefits, joint ownership does not imply equal rights, and women do not universally prefer exclusive ownership. The presenters emphasized that standard household survey modules often miss these nuances, and that incorporating vignettes and control-and-benefits measures can generate more policy-relevant evidence on women’s economic security and asset-based empowerment across contexts.
International Food Policy Research Institute