1. Annual World Bank Conference on Land And Poverty 2016
Intra-Household Allocation And Gender Distribution Of Land Ownership: Findings From A Large Survey In Rural Uganda.
Ludovica Cherchi1
Markus Goldstein1
James Habyarimana3
Joao Montalvao1
Michael O’Sullivan1
Richard Oput2
Christopher Udry4
1The World Bank Gender Innovation Lab;
2Ministry of Land, Housing, Urban Development, Uganda;
3Georgetown University;
4Yale University
Annual World Bank Conference on Land And Poverty 2016
insights of the baseline data collection from an IE on land rights and gender equality in Uganda

2. Background
80% of the rural land in Uganda is held under unregistered customary tenure.
The Government of Uganda is carrying out a World Bank-funded project to register and title 800,000 parcels of individually customarily owned land in rural areas (SLAAC).
Why titling rural land?
Land titles can:
Improve tenure security and reduce the risk of expropriations and disputes
Increase transferability of rights, increasing participation in the rental and sales market
Improve access to credit
Improve investments and productivity on the land
The Government wants to supplement this intervention with a strategy to promote gender equality in land registration.
Secure land rights + facilitate investments + benefits
Currently a costly and long process
Current system less favorable towards women

3. Motivation
The Africa Gender Innovation Lab of the World Bank, in collaboration with the Uganda Ministry of Lands, designed an Impact Evaluation (IE) on the SLAAC project.
Lack of rigorous Impact Evaluation evidence on the causal effects of titling and co-titling.
The GIL IE uses a rigorous Randomized Controlled Trial approach to examine the causal impacts of the project.

4. IE Objectives
Overall effects of the Government intervention on household welfare
Understand and quantify both expected impacts and risks associated with the program
Inform the design of a subsequent national roll-out.
Impact of increased intra-household gender equality in land ownership on household welfare.

5. IE Study Setting
Uganda

6. Estimating the Impact of Two Interventions:
Government intervention (SLAAC):
of individually customarily owned parcels of land.
and registration
Systematic demarcation, adjudication
Intra-household Gender Equality intervention
Incentives to increase take up of ‘co-titling’ (names of both spouses included in the land titles) i. HH level sensitization about the benefits of titling and co-titling using an educational video ii. Financial incentives (title registration fees waiver) conditional on co-titling
Note 1: Reduced cost. Nominal cost for the title.
Note 2: 2 preliminary qualitative work to identify best strategy for the household level intervention. Target both spouses

7. Study Design Full sample: 3000 Households from 600 Villages
(2400 HHs monogamous and 600 polygamous)
Treatment Villages
2250 HHs
TA1: Conditional incentive for co-titling
750 HHs
TA2: Unconditional incentive for titling
TA3: Intervention without incentives
Comparison Villages

8. Baseline Data Collection
Baseline data collection in 2015
3000 households with co-habiting couples that own non-registered land in the community of interest.
Spouse level interviews.
2957 Households
75% in Western Uganda
Average # of parcels used by the HH: 3.2
Share of parcels owned by the HH (self reported): 76%
Let’s look at the level of documentation

9. Ownership Document Mean St.Dev Obs
Mean
St.Dev
Obs
Parcel has a document proving ownership
0.65
0.48
7181
Type of document
Freehold title issued by the Government
0.01
0.11
4643
Sales agreement
Document signed by a local official
0.28
0.45
Inheritance document
0.12
0.32
Certificate of customary ownership
0.02
Receipt from local government
0.08
5% (59) of the household that were replace.
The idea is just to mention that even if that was not part of our eligibility criteria, uptake of formal titling is extremely low
These documents do not carry the same weight as gov issued document

10. Demand for Freehold Titles
Mean
St.Dev
Obs
Parcel manager knows what a Government-issued land ownership document is.
0.57
0.49
7181
Parcel for which the manager plans to get a freehold title in the next 12 months.
0.15
0.35
4070
Reason for not having a formal document for the parcel
It is too costly to obtain one
0.67
0.47
I do not think it would be useful
0.14
0.34
I do not know how to obtain one
0.09
0.28
It takes too long to obtain one
0.04
0.19

11. Gender Equality In The Customary System
Mean
St.Dev
Obs
Female spouse is
plot manager - at least one plot
0.54
0.5
6612
parcel owner - self reported
0.26
0.44
7181
parcel owner - her name is on the ownership document - self reported
0.21
0.41
4643
Female spouse can
sell the parcel (exclusively or jointly)
0.32
0.47
use the parcel as collateral for credit (exclusively or jointly)
0.37
0.48
rent out the parcel (exclusively or jointly)
0.38
0.49
plant tree crops or other long term investments (exclusively or jointly)
0.43
Most managed by man, women are managers but mostly joint with their husbands. As a result only X% of the parcels have…

12. Perception of Land Rights
Female spouses lack ownership rights in the current customary system.
Should they be included in the ownership title?
Mean
St.Dev
Obs
Respondent thinks both spouses names should appear on the ownership title.
Male spouse
0.52
0.5
2932
Female spouse
0.71
0.46
2922
This intervention hopes to change gender imbalances, so we asked how willing would be male spouse to co.title and only …
Importance of gender informed sensitization, make a difference in shifting gender perspective

13. Conclusion
Lack of knowledge and high cost of getting a title main emerge as main reasons for not having a title
Female spouses lack ownership rights in the current customary system
Low willingness of male spouses to include their wives on the title
Low share of formal titling

14. Moving forward…
Government and household-level gender interventions in 2016
First follow-up household survey in 2017 to shed light on early impacts
Second follow-up household survey in 2018