Whether women have equal rights to inherit as men serves can serve as an indication of their legal standing and general and is also and important determinant of their economic position in itself, specifically whether they are able to accumulate wealth. Inheritance practices of ethnic groups from the Ethnographic Atlas were used to reconstruct inheritance practices at the country level for c. 1920 and the World Bank’s 50 Years of Women's Legal Rights was used for data on the inheritance in 1960, 1980, and 2000.

Please consult the working paper for a description of the data and sources.