Doss, Cheryl; Deere, Carmen Diana; Abena D. Oduro, Suchitra J. Y.; Hillesland, Marya
Description:
This field guide outlines the key lessons learned from implementing household surveys that collected individual level asset ownership data in four countries. Three of the surveys, in Ecuador, Ghana, and Karnataka, India were implemented by the In Her Name: Measuring the Gender Asset Gap Project funded by the Dutch Government MDG3 fund. The fourth was implemented in Uganda by the Pathways to Secure Access to Assets: Land Tenure and Beyond project funded through the Assets and Market Access Collaborative Research Support Program of USAID. All four questionnaires were based on a template designed by three of the project leaders in a previous study.1 In each country, extensive background work included the study of the legal marital and inheritance regimes and qualitative field work involving focus groups and key informant interviews. The four main themes of the focus groups were the accumulation of assets over the individual life cycle; the importance of assets; the market for assets; and household decision-making over asset acquisition and use. The qualitative work was essential in adapting the generic template to specific contexts. One of the challenges of this overall Project has been to find ways to obtain data that is comparable across countries and is also appropriate and relevant in the specific contexts.