Is Kenya’s gender wealth gap narrowing? New insights from probate records

Abstract This article introduces a new dataset on individuals leaving inheritances in Kenya, which sheds light on the country’s marked gender disparities in the ownership of wealth. An estimated 9% of decedents in Kenya leave estates that undergo probate or administration. Since the 1980s, men have been four times more likely than women to leave such estates at death. But this gender estate gap has been narrowing. The share of women leaving wealth at death has risen from below 10% in the 1970s to 25% today. The geographic variation in this gender estate gap shows that women are more likely to leave wealth in regions with active land and property markets, suggesting that women are sharing in the ownership of assets purchased in the course of their lifetimes. In contrast, in regions where much of the wealth stock is comprised of ancestral land, women remain a smaller share of inheritance-leavers.