Presented by Ruth Meinzen-Dick, Nancy Johnson, Jemimah Njuki, and Agnes Quisumbing at the ISPC Science Forum 2016, Addis Ababa, 12-14 April 2016

1. Assets: Keys to Prosperity
Ruth Meinzen-Dick, IFPRI
Nancy Johnson, IFPRI
Jemimah Njuki, IDRC
Agnes Quisumbing, IFPRI
Addis Ababa, 12-14 April 2016

2. Why focus on assets?
 Access to, control over, and ownership of assets are
critical components of well-being
 Productive assets can generate products or services
that can be consumed or sold to generate income
 Assets are stores of wealth that can increase in value
 Assets can act as collateral and facilitate access to
credit, financial services, increase social status
 Assets give individuals the capability to be and to act
 Increasing control over assets enables more
permanent pathways out of poverty compared to
increased incomes or consumption alone

3. Why focus on women’s assets?
 Intrahousehold literature shows the importance of
women’s asset ownership for important individual
and family outcomes like education and nutrition.
 Within households, it matters who owns the assets

4. Assets Well-being
Livelihood
strategy
Full income
Consumption
Savings/
Investment
Shocks
Men WomenJoint
Context: Ecological, social, economic, and political
factors
GAAP Conceptual Framework

5. FOR EXAMPLE:
Men and women have different rights to own land and different
access to irrigation, and therefore experience low levels of
rainfall differently.

6. Assets Well-being
Livelihood
strategy
Full income
Consumption
Savings/
Investment
Shocks
Men WomenJoint
Context: Ecological, social, economic, and political
factors
GAAP Conceptual Framework
Assets

7. Assets can be owned individually or jointly,
but joint ownership does not mean an asset
is owned EQUALLY.

8. Assets
The jointness may not always be an equal
division

9. Assets Well-being
Livelihood
strategy
Full income
Consumption
Savings/
Investment
Shocks
Men WomenJoint
Context: Ecological, social, economic, and political
factors
GAAP Conceptual Framework
Assets Livelihood
strategy

10. Assets Livelihood
strategy

11. Assets Well-being
Livelihood
strategy
Full income
Consumption
Savings/
Investment
Shocks
Men WomenJoint
Context: Ecological, social, economic, and political
factors
GAAP Conceptual Framework
Assets Livelihood
strategy
Shocks

12. Assets Livelihood
strategy
Shocks

13. Assets Well-being
Livelihood
strategy
Full income
Consumption
Savings/
Investment
Shocks
Men WomenJoint
Context: Ecological, social, economic, and political
factors
GAAP Conceptual Framework
Full income
Livelihood
strategy

14. VEGGIES
CASH CROPS/STAPLES
Full income
Livelihood
strategy
FULL INCOME is not only
the cash that the family
brings in (via cash crops
and wage income) but
also the value of crops
for home consumption,
and most importantly,
the value of a family
member’s TIME.

15. Assets Well-being
Livelihood
strategy
Full income
Consumption
Savings/
Investment
Shocks
Men WomenJoint
Context: Ecological, social, economic, and political
factors
GAAP Conceptual Framework
Consumption
Savings/inves
tment
Full income

16. Consumption
Savings/inves
tment
Full income
CONSUMPTION

17. Consumption
Savings/inves
tment
Full income
SAVINGS FUTURE LAND
TITLE
DOWRY
INVESTMENT
FARM EQUIPMENT
FERTILIZER TO
INCREASE YEILDS
DRIP IRRIGATION
SYSTEM

18. Consumption
Savings/inves
tment
Full income
DOWRY
FERTILIZER TO
INCREASE YEILDS
SAVINGS
FULL INCOME
Consumption
Savings &
Investment

19. Assets Well-being
Livelihood
strategy
Full income
Consumption
Savings/
Investment
Shocks
Men WomenJoint
Context: Ecological, social, economic, and political
factors
Men WomenJoint
GAAP Conceptual Framework

20. Well-being
Consumption
Assets
Savings/inves
tment
Education and food
security enhance
well-being
Educating children, saving up for a daughter’s
dowry so that she has assets in her marriage,
or buying a plot of land as an investment all
increase one’s well-being and stock of assets
Having land can
make one feel more
secure, allowing one
to invest and plan
ahead even before
they generate
income or crops from
that land.
Health
Nutritional
status
Empowerment
GAAP Conceptual Framework

21. GAAP Conceptual Framework
Assets Well-being
Livelihood
strategy
Full income
Consumption
Savings/
Investment
Shocks
Men WomenJoint
Context: Ecological, social, economic, and political
factors

22. The Gender, Agriculture and Assets
Project (GAAP)
 Sought to answer the question: What is the impact of
agricultural development projects on men’s and
women’s assets and the gender asset gap?
 Funded by BMGF from 2010-2014. Led by IFPRI and
ILRI.
 Based on evidence from the evaluation of 8 projects
in Africa and South Asia
 Projects were already doing evaluations; GAAP
provided a top up to look at gender and assets

23. Projects had diverse interventions and
approaches to gender
Project
implementer
Country Main agricultural intervention
Approach to gender
at start of project*
Landesa India Land transfer and regularization Gender aware
BRAC Bangladesh Land and livestock transfer Gender aware
CARE Bangladesh Increasing production and income Gender
transformative
Land O’Lakes Mozambique Cow transfer Gender blind
Helen Keller
International
Burkina Faso Land and tools transfer Gender
transformative
HarvestPlus Uganda Increasing access to planting
material of micronutrient food
Gender aware
IRRI India Increase awareness and availability
of agricultural technologies
Gender blind
KickStart Kenya and
Tanzania
Marketing of pumps Gender blind

24. And approaches to evaluation
Project implementer Evaluation design (Quantitative)
Landesa Propensity-weighted regressions
BRAC Randomized controlled trial
CARE Propensity-weighted regressions
Land O’Lakes Early vs. late cow recipients
Helen Keller International Randomized controlled trial
HarvestPlus Randomized controlled trial
Cereal Systems Initiative for
South Asia
Comparator control villages
KickStart* Early vs. late pump buyers

25. Two main findings that cut across
projects
 Gendered use, control, and ownership of assets
affect the take-up of agricultural interventions
 Agricultural interventions affect the gendered use,
control, and ownership of assets

26. “if you build it, they will come”
 “If you have a good intervention, people will participate”…not
necessarily
 For example, dairy value chain projects require having a cow!
 Different approaches to this:
 Target households that already have cows: CARE-
Bangladesh
 Transfer cows: BRAC-Targeting Ultra Poor
 Transfer cows and provide training: Land O’Lakes
Mozambique
 Other projects (e.g. Kickstart treadle pumps) have market
driven approaches—no subsidy on pump buying
 Dissemination of seeds, new varieties, assume use or control
rights over land (even if not ownership)

27. Who gets to come?
In Land O’lakes
program, training
was initially
given only to men
because they
own cows. But
women play an
important role in
dairying, so the
cows suffered.
Training was
expanded to 2
members per
household.
Photocredit:LandO’Lakes-Mozambique:MSDDP

28. Who within the household decides what
to grow?
The HarvestPlus REU project
in Uganda found that the
probability of orange-flesh
sweetpotato (OSP) adoption
was highest for parcels over
which there was joint control
but where women took the lead
in deciding which crops were
grown. The probability of
adopting OSP was lowest for
parcels exclusively controlled
by men.
Photocredit:HarvestPlusUganda

29. Do men and women have equal control of
resources that enable adoption?
Kickstart: Adoption
of treadle pumps by
women buyers was
much lower than that
of male buyers,
owing to women’s
limited financial
resources.
Photocredit:KickstartInternational

30. Projects often propose solutions to the “need
asset to adopt” problem
Landesa
• West Bengal allocation of
microplots:
• Allocate microplots to
households, prioritize female-
headed households and widows
• Joint titling to primary male
and female adult
• Odisha government land titling
programs
• Grant title to households
already occupying government
land
• Distribute individual title to
households residing on
previously communally-titled
land.
• Make sure woman’s name on
patta
Burkina HKI Enhanced
Homestead Food Production
project
• Make land available for
community gardens through
agreements with land owners

31. Agricultural interventions can affect the
gendered use, control, and ownership of assets
Project increased household assets, and projects that targeted
women increased women’s assets.
Photocredit:HKI’sEnhancedHomestead
FoodProduction(E-HFP)

32. This was true even for projects that did not distribute assets. Men
were also able to build assets through projects, even those that
targeted women.
Photocredit:AkramAli,CAREBangladeshSDVCproject

33. In some cases, increases in assets were associated with greater
participation in decisionmaking, but not all.
Photocredit:SupriyaChatterjee,Landesa

34. Both projects in Bangladesh increased women’s assets but contributed
to a shift towards women working inside the home.
Photocredit:BRAC

35. Most projects, especially livestock projects, were associated with
increases in labor of women and other household members.
Photocredit:LandO’Lakes-Mozambique:MSDDP

36. All projects reported increased production and income, however
women were usually not able to maintain control of income when
output was sold.
Photocredit:AkramAli/CAREBangladesh)t

37. Project beneficiaries reported a range of intangible benefits
including self esteem, family unity and mobility. They also noted
shifts in community attitudes about gender, including women’s
ability to own assets such as land.
Photocredit:LandO’Lakes-Mozambique:MSDDP

38. Conclusions
 Projects that unambiguously benefit households may have mixed
effects on individuals within those household, especially women
 In general projects provide evidence supporting the conceptual
framework, however the outcomes are complex and often imply
trade offs
 More research is needed to understand and measure how assets
affect and are affected by agricultural development, in different
contexts

39. Implications for agricultural research
 Our findings from GAAP can be used to inform agricultural
research and development to enhance uptake and impact.
 Agricultural research has typically focused on increasing yields
and productivity, and only more recently, poverty reduction
 An assets perspective highlights asset-related barriers to
adoption of agricultural technologies; a gender-assets
perspective focuses on differences in barriers than men and
women face
 A gendered perspective also sharpens the focus on well-being,
more broadly defined, and links agricultural research to health
and nutrition outcomes that we also want to improve