Intra-household wealth inequality: A study on Bangladesh

Abstract

Wealth disparity within the household is a largely neglected area of research. Most studies on income and wealth inequality focus on inter-household inequality. However, there is significant intra-household gender inequality which needs to be studied, in order for welfare initiatives to work. Generally, wealth ownership of women is much less in comparison to that of men. This was seen in a study done in India1 , where it was found that 32% of the total wealth inequality can be attributed to intra-household inequality. We wanted to study household wealth inequality in other parts of the world in order to see if similar patterns emerge. The focus in this paper is on Bangladesh.