A seat at the table: The role of information, conditions, and voice in redistributing intra-household property rights
Ludovica Cherchi, James Habyarimana, Joao Montalvao, Michael O’Sullivan, Chris Udry
This paper evaluates different policy instruments to increase demand for gender equality in formal land ownership among married couples in rural Uganda. We do so in the context of a land titling intervention offering households free land titles. We cross-randomized whether (a) the household is exposed to an information treatment making salient the benefits of adding the wife’s name to the title as joint owner of the land; (b) the land title offer is made conditional on the wife’s name being added to the title; and (c) the intervention is targeted to both spouses versus husbands alone. The results show that when the intervention is targeted to husbands, only half of the households initially choose to add the wives’ name on the title as joint owners of the land. But exposure to the information treatment persuades the majority of households to add the wives’ names on the titles. In contrast, when the information is targeted to couples, the majority of households choose to add the wives’ names on the titles irrespective of the information treatment. We find that imposing the condition that titles must include the wives’ names does not cause a reduction in overall demand for titling. The results have important policy impacts for land formalization programs in Africa.
Event: World Bank Land Conference 2024 - Washington
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