Effect of education and gender on household ownership of asset types in rural Western Kenya Region

Abstract

Asset development is a key strategy to promote economic and social development. Measurement of inequality has been given relatively little attention to the asset ownership by households. The study examines relative importance of asset types and extent to which household headship factors affect ownership among households of Western Kenya.

The study was cross sectional descriptive using quantitative methods. A total of 538 households were selected for the study comprising 184(34%) households with under-five death and 355(66%) as controls.

Findings show that the extent to which asset types demonstrate significant differential inequality in ownership (p-value <0.05) varies by household headship factors, where gender clustered by education shows the highest number of asset types exhibiting significant inequality 17(50%) between households; followed by education 7(21%) and lastly gender 4(12%).

Results underscore importance of high education, although the impact is different across the different genders.The impact is greater among the male headed households

Key Words: Rural households, asset types, asset ownership, household headship, education, gender.