Does social capital build women's assets? : disseminating agricultural technologies to individuals versus groups in Bangladesh.

Abstract

Although Bangladesh experienced impressive reductions in poverty from the mid-1990s until the onset of the food price crisis in 2007—with the percentage of the population living in poverty falling from 51 percent in 1995 to 40 percent in 2005—50 million of the country’s people still live in extreme poverty, and 36 million people cannot afford an adequate diet. In addition, poverty in Bangladesh has a well-recognized gender dimen-sion, with the result that many government and nongovernmental organization (NGO) interventions designed to help individuals and households escape poverty are targeted toward women.

This study focused on determining the long-term impacts of the adoption of new vegetable varieties and polyculture fishpond management technologies on men’s and women’s land and asset holdings. The researchers used alternative definitions of assets according to ownership, whereby “exclusively owned” assets are those identified by the husband or wife as his or her own, and “exclusive and jointly owned” assets are exclusively owned assets plus half of jointly owned assets.

Citation

IFPRI and CPRC, (2010)

Does social capital build women’s assets? : disseminating agricultural technologies to individuals versus groups in Bangladesh.

Published 1 January 2010