Understanding the Meanings of Ownership

Expanding women’s asset ownership is key for improving gender equality and promoting economic development and well-being. A widespread challenge in data collection is that ownership can have different meanings across contexts, particularly regarding which components of the bundle of rights comprise ownership. Yet, surveys often implicitly assume that all rights are held by the same person. This module allows us to elicit responses regarding subjective assessments of what ownership entails by presenting different scenarios in which the main premise is a woman owning a particular asset, but scenarios differ on the rights that women have over the asset. The multiple questions aim to assess how the answers may vary by type of asset and women’s status in the household (living with a partner, living with in-laws, living with her parents). To fully understand individuals’ understanding of ownership, it is useful to have this tool alongside modules that solicit information on individual’s ownership of the asset.

Link to: tool content and guidelines, CTO file, and statistical annex

Duration: This tool takes on average 1.56 minutes to be implemente

Permitted use of the tool: users are free to use the tool with citation “MAGNET (2023). Understanding the Meanings of Ownership. https://magnet.ifpri.info/understanding-the-meanings-of-ownership/"

Tool sample

A. Couple with in-laws

A woman saves her money to purchase a (female) goat.  She lives with her husband and his parents.  I’m going to read four different scenarios and I want you to tell me which one is most like households in your community.

a. The woman owns the goat and any offspring from the goat.  She can decide what to do with the milk and whether to sell or give away the kids.
b. The woman owns the goat and can decide what to do with the milk.  But her husband must agree if she wishes to sell or give away the goat or the kids.
c. The woman owns the goat and can decide what to do with the milk.  But her in-laws must agree if she wishes to sell or give away the goat or the kids.
d. The goat belongs to the household.  As the household head, her father-in-law makes decisions about whether to sell the goat or the kids.

Measurement properties 

• Geographies Tested: Kenya, Côte d'Ivoire
• Populations included: Women, Men
• Age range: Adult

For details on these testing metrics, visit our scoring methodology page.