Who Owns the Land? Perspectives from Rural Ugandans and Implications for Large-Scale Land Acquisitions

Rapidly growing demand for agricultural land is putting pressure on property-rights systems, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, where customary tenure systems have provided secure land access. Rapid and large-scale demands from outsiders are challenging patterns of gradual, endogenous change toward formalization. Little attention has focused on the gender dimensions of this transformation. However this contribution, based on a 2008–09 study of land tenure in Uganda, analyzes how different definitions of land ownership – including household reports, existence of ownership documents, and rights over the land – provide very different indications of the gendered patterns of land ownership and rights. While many households report husbands and wives as joint owners of the land, women are less likely to be listed on ownership documents, and have fewer rights. A simplistic focus on “title” to land misses much of the reality regarding land tenure and could have an adverse impact on women's land rights.     

农村建设用地使用权流转的制度障碍与制度构建

中国现行土地法律制度与农村建设用地流转的现实已经不相适应。城乡分割的二元土地制度、农地的产权残缺及其所承栽的社会保障功能的日益强化限制了农地的流转。因此,需要对农村建设用地使用权流转的相关法律进行修改或调整,明晰农村土地产权,明确土地流转的收益分配,改革土地征用制度,建立和逐步完善农村社会保障体系。     

Land tenure and investment incentives: Evidence from West Africa

The existing literature on the relationship between property rights in land and agricultural investment in Africa has given results that are often confusing and contradictory. I make two clarifying contributions to this literature. First, I pull together existing studies and investigate whether the results they find have been affected by research methods or local contexts. Studies with small sample sizes, those that use binary investment measures, and those that control for household fixed effects are less likely to find a statistically significant link between land tenure and investment. Self-reported tenure security has been a poor predictor of investment outcomes. Second, I test for a relationship between land tenure and agricultural investment in nine data sets from West Africa. While the link between tenure and investment is significant for fallow and tree planting, it is less robust for labor use and other inputs, such as manure or chemical fertilizer.     

农地分配中的性别平等问题

本文借助于 1 996年对山西农村抽样调查数据的统计分析 ,论证我国农村土地分配中的性别平等虽然在法律上和经济制度上得到保障 ,但是这些制度在细节上的漏洞 ,使离婚妇女缺少地权保障 ,错过村社土地调整机会的婚嫁迁移妇女及其子女暂时无地。这种现象虽然还没有对妇女在家庭内部的谈判地位产生显著影响 ,却足以使她们的家庭陷入贫困。因此 ,有必要在现行土地管理法和政府有关农地承包的规定中添加性别视角。     

Wage Differentials between the State and Private Sectors in Moscow

In this study the 1997 Russian Labor Force Survey is used to investigate wage differentials between the state and the private sector in the city of Moscow. Our analysis demonstrates that substantial differences exist between private and state sector wages. We estimate the gap between private and state sector wages to be 14.3 percent for men and 18.3 percent for women. We also find gender differences in wages. Men in the private sector earn on average 23.7 percent more than women. The gender wage gap in the state sector is even higher at 32.5 percent. In the state sector, wages for both men and women increase as years of tenure increase. But in the private sector this is only true for men; women earn no return to tenure. The probability of employment in the private sector decreases with age and tenure.     

Can the Law Secure Women's Rights to Land in Africa? Revisiting Tensions Between Culture and Land Commercialization

This contribution is concerned with the challenges of securing women's rights to land in Africa in the context of contemporary land deals through a discussion of three distinct but interrelated problems in the framing of women's land rights discourses. First, this study discusses the interface between rights and “custom” to highlight the inherent distortions of African customary law. Second, it argues that liberal formulations of the law are limited by a set of assumptions regarding women's position in the political economy. And third, this discussion discursively assesses the debates in the literature regarding the efficacy of law in protecting women's rights to land. The discussion proceeds from a critique of two approaches to promoting gender equity in land tenure systems: the institutional approach, which deals with women's formal land rights; and the political economy approach, which deals with the structural nature of women's traditional relations to land.     

Land rights,rental markets and the post-socialist cityscape

Inefficiently organized, factory-dominated cityscapes have been one of the more enduring legacies of the twentieth century experiment with socialist central planning in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Drawing on a unique survey of large, formerly state-owned urban industrial firms in Russia, we explore how land tenure reforms affect the pace at which this legacy is being erased. For various historical, political, and economic reasons, there is substantial variation across firms as to their ownership of the land on which they sit. Despite facing no additional formal constraints, those that do not own their plots rent them out at a lower frequency than those that have acquired private tenure to their land. The privatization of plots, in other words, promotes the development of a rental market that transfers land use rights away from socialist-era industrial users. We address the potential endogeneity of land tenure using a measure of regional variation in urban land policy and Communist party vote shares as instrumental variables.     

以农用地定级结果为基础确定耕地保有量的理论模型研究

随着社会经济的发展,耕地数量急剧减少和各项非农建设占用耕地面积不断扩大的矛盾日益突出。为解决人口高峰年的粮食安全问题,国家提出了通过总体规划实施耕地保护的重要手段。首先,本文针对在总体规划中耕地保有量计算中存在的问题提出了耕地保有量计算的新模型。其次,提出了人口对耕地总需求潜力分计算模型。最后,用上年保有耕地生产力潜力分、年度耕地生产力供给分的变化量和人口对耕地生产力需求潜力分变化量综合确定本年的保有耕地生产力潜力分。     

Land,Gender, and Food Security

Since 2008, a surge in large-scale land acquisitions, or land grabs, has been taking place in low- and middle-income countries around the globe. This contribution examines the gendered effects of and responses to these deals, drawing on nine studies, which include conceptual framing essays that bring in debates about human rights, studies that draw on previous waves of land acquisitions globally, and case studies that examine the gendered dimensions of land dispossession and loss of common property. Three key insights emerge: the evolving gender and land tenure literature provides valuable information for understanding the likely effects of land deals; some of the land deal issues transcend gender-equity concerns and relate to broader problems of dispossession and loss of livelihoods; and huge gaps remain in our knowledge of gender and land rights that require urgent attention and systematic integration of gender analysis into mainstream research.     

农民的土地产权稳定性意愿及其对土地产权稳定性的影响

定性分析了农民土地产权稳定性意愿对土地产权稳定性的可能影响,并利用抽样调查的数据对农民土地产权稳定性意愿与土地产权稳定性之间的关系进行了定量分析。结果揭示,在调查区域,农民的土地产权稳定性意愿并未得到尊重,即农民意愿对土地产权稳定性未能发挥显著影响。     

Land Tenure Insecurity and Formalizing Land Rights in Madagascar: A Gender Perspective on the Certification Program

This contribution examines Madagascar's land tenure reform – aimed at reducing land tenure insecurity – from a gender perspective. In particular, it investigates the certification program issuing formal land title deeds (land certificates) to landholders. Drawing on a household survey with gender-disaggregated asset data conducted in the rural municipality Soavinandriana, the analysis suggests that the certification program has strengthened both men's and women's formal claims to individually held land. However, the lack of gender equality principles and, in particular, of mechanisms to ensure that couples’ jointly held land is jointly secured, seems to have reinforced primary ownership of land by male household heads, at the expense of women's land rights. Furthermore, the land tenure reform does not address some of the most important threats to tenure security such as colonial titles and commercial pressure on land, and large parts of the country are still not covered by the certification program.     

Property rights imperfections and asset allocation: Co-ownership in Bulgaria

This paper analyzes how imperfections of property rights affect households’ allocation of assets using micro-survey data from Bulgaria. Co-ownership of assets is widespread in many countries due to inheritance. Central and Eastern Europe offers an interesting natural experiment to assess the effects of this type of property rights imperfection because of the asset restitution process in the 1990s. In Bulgaria, where co-ownership is very prominent and land is strongly fragmented, the land reform and inheritance legislation allows identifying the impact of co-ownership by taking advantage of a discontinuity created by a minimum plot size law. We find that land in co-ownership is more likely to be used by less efficient farm organizations or to be left abandoned, and that it is related to significant welfare losses. The paper hence provides evidence of sub-optimal land allocation following a privatization that established formal but imperfect property rights.     

土地腐败问题的行政审批视角分析

本文提出目前我国土地行政管理体制中不够合理的土地行政权力配置、有待完善和提高的土地行政审批程序和效率,为土地腐败行为创造了条件,也损害了正常的市场秩序和公众利益。合理配置土地行政审批权力、进一步规范土地行政审批程序、提高土地行政审批效率是抑制土地腐败的有效途径。     

Tenure security and land-related investment: Evidence from Ethiopia

We use a large data set from Ethiopia that differentiates tenure security and transferability to explore determinants of different types of land-related investment and its possible impact on productivity. While we find some support for endogeneity of investment in trees, this is not the case for terraces. Transfer rights are unambiguously investment-enhancing. The large productivity effect of terracing implies that, even where households undertake investments to increase their tenure security, the level of such investment may be below the social optimum. In Ethiopia, government action to increase tenure security and transferability of land rights can significantly enhance rural investment and productivity.     

The role of gender and its potential channels to affect self-employment in Taiwan

This research investigates the gender differences in the self-employment sector by employing a dynamic panel model with county- and city-level data from 1998 to 2016 in Taiwan. Our study is distinct from most others in this issue in that we explore not only the inter-gender difference, but also the intra-gender differences in self-employment. Following this framework, we first find that women are on average less likely to self-employ than men, and further find that older men, married men, men living in lower income regions and women living in higher income regions are more likely to become self-employed compared to their respective reference groups. We thus argue that gender influences self-employment not only directly but also through interactions with other demographic variables. Separate evaluation of different groups based on demographics should therefore result in better targeting of policies.     

Does the recognition of indigenous territories impact household economic situations? Evidence from western Panama

The Government of Panama created a semi-autonomous indigenous area in 1997. The establishment of this region institutionalizes indigenous authorities and prohibits land privatization. This study investigates the effect of the recognition of common property land to indigenous groups on economic performance. By using difference-in-differences approach at household-level data, I find that non-migrant indigenous households living in the semi-autonomous territory declined their consumption relative to their counterparts living outside. Further, indigenous households living in the semi-autonomous territory have lower access to public goods and are less likely to participate in agricultural market activities.     

Gendered Paths to Asset Accumulation? Markets,Savings, and Credit in Developing Countries

An extensive literature shows how property inheritance is biased against women in many developing countries, yet relatively little attention has been given to gender bias in other means of acquiring physical assets, such as the market. Using individual-level data from Ecuador, Ghana, and Karnataka, India, this study analyzes modes of acquisition and financing of housing, agricultural land, other real estate, and businesses. The findings show that women acquire fewer of their assets through the market than men, and that in asset markets, both men and women are more likely to use their own savings than to use credit. The study also analyzes current loans for asset acquisition and finds that, in general, women tend to be somewhat disadvantaged in securing formal bank loans. The results suggest that financial inclusion to promote more gender equal access to accumulation of assets should focus on both savings and credit, with priority to savings.     

You can’t always get what you want: gender differences in job satisfaction of university graduates

Previous literature stressed on the gender differences in job satisfaction and the factors influencing the job satisfaction of men and women. Two rationales are usually provided for the finding that women tend to be relatively more satisfied with their jobs than men although disadvantaged in labour markets: first, women may have relatively lower expectations of career and income, and second, they may attach relatively less importance to extrinsic rewards than men. In order to analyse whether substantial gender differences exist already at the beginning of the career, we employ information of over 20 000 graduates collected through a large-scale survey of German university graduates who recently entered the labour market. We find that the job satisfaction of female graduates is on average slightly lower than the job satisfaction of male graduates, but our results do not point to substantial gender differences. In our sample of highly qualified individuals, men and women are very similar in what they want from their jobs and also in their perceptions of what they get. While our results point to substantial similarity of men and women in the early career stage, gender differences may emerge at later stages of the career life cycle.     

The wage effects of training in Portugal: differences across skill groups,genders, sectors and training types

This article investigates the determinants and wage effects of training in Portugal. In a first stage, we show that there are considerable differences in training participation across groups of workers, with elder and low educated individuals participating substantially less. In a second stage, we show that training has a positive and significant impact on wages. The estimated wage return is about 30% for men and 38% for women. Discriminating between levels of education and working experience and the public and private sector reveals important differences across categories of workers. We find that women, low educated workers and workers with long working experience earn larger returns from training. The average effect of training is similar in the private sector and the public sector. However, differences across experience groups are larger in the private sector, while differences across education groups are larger in the public sector. We use three alternative classifications of training activities and find that training in the firm, training aimed to improve skills needed at the current job and training with duration less than a year are associated to larger wage gains.     

Coercive Harmony in Land Acquisition: The Gendered Impact of Corporate “Responsibility” in the Brazilian Amazon

In rural development, women's access to land is recognized as a condition for reaching gender equality. This contribution discusses the tension between this formal recognition and concrete realities in rural development for traditional Amazonian communities by examining large-scale land acquisitions in Brazil, a land-abundant developing country, in the wake of the 2007–08 global food price crises. This study applies anthropological and legal perspectives to analyze problems related to gender inequality caused by large-scale land acquisitions. It argues that inequalities cannot be resolved by simply changing regulations related to traditional communities’ and women's rights and that gender relations and land tenure issues reflect interconnected social arrangements based on historical specificities of traditional communities. Case studies show that land acquisitions by outsiders disrupt these arrangements, despite stated commitments to social and environmental responsibility. Such “coercive harmony” is only unmasked when communities are conscious of their rights, enabling effective use of the legal apparatus.