Women's Individual and Joint Property Ownership: Effects on Household Decisionmaking

36 Pages Posted: 22 Aug 2014

See all articles by Cheryl R. Doss

Cheryl R. Doss

University of Oxford - Department of International Development

Sung Kim

Yale University

Jemimah Njuki

Cultivate Africa’s Future

Emily Hillenbrand

CARE USA, Atlanta

Maureen Miruka

Care USA - CARE USA, Tanzania

Date Written: April 30, 2014

Abstract

Increasingly, women’s property rights are seen as important for both equity and efficiency reasons. While there has been debate in the literature about women are better off with individual rights in contrast to rights jointly with their husband, little empirical work has analyzed this question. In this paper, the relationship of women’s individual and joint property ownership and the level of women’s input into household decisionmaking is explored with data from India, Mali, Malawi, and Tanzania. In the three African countries, women with individual landownership have greater input into household decisionmaking than women whose landownership is joint; both have more input than women who are not landowners. The relationship with other household decisions is more mixed, as is the relationship between housing and input into household decisionmaking. No similar relationship is found in Orissa, India.

Keywords: Decision making, Gender, housing, Land, Property rights, Women, Africa, Africa South of Sahara, Asia, East Africa, India, Malawi, Mali, South Asia, Southern Africa, Tanzania, West Africa

Suggested Citation

Doss, Cheryl R. and Kim, Sung and Njuki, Jemimah and Hillenbrand, Emily and Miruka, Maureen, Women's Individual and Joint Property Ownership: Effects on Household Decisionmaking (April 30, 2014). IFPRI Discussion Paper 01347, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2483968 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2483968

Cheryl R. Doss (Contact Author)

University of Oxford - Department of International Development ( email )

3 Mansfield Road
Oxford, OX1 3TB
United Kingdom

Sung Kim

Yale University ( email )

493 College St
New Haven, CT CT 06520
United States

Jemimah Njuki

Cultivate Africa’s Future ( email )

P.O. Box 5689
Ababa
Kenya

Emily Hillenbrand

CARE USA, Atlanta ( email )

151 Ellis Street, NE
Atlanta, GA 30303
United States

Maureen Miruka

Care USA - CARE USA, Tanzania ( email )

P.O. Box 10242
Dar-es-Salaam
Tanzania

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