Household Welfare Effects of Low-cost Land Certification in Ethiopia

Transcription

1 Household Welfare Effects of Low-cost Land Certification in Ethiopia By Stein Holden and Hosaena Ghebru School of Economics and Business, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, P.O. Box 5033, 1432 Ås, Norway. Homepage:

2 Introduction Tigray Region in northern Ethiopia was the first region to implement low-cost land registration and certification, from 1998 Earlier studies of the impacts of low-cost land registration and certification on Land investments and productivity Holden, Deininger and Ghebru (AJAE, 2009) Deininger, Ali, Holden and Zevenbergen (WD, 2008) Deininger, Ali and Alemu (LE, 2011)

3 Earlier studies, cont. Impacts on land conflicts Holden, Deininger and Ghebru (2010) Impacts on land rental market participation Holden, Deininger and Ghebru (JDS, 2011) Deininger, Ali and Alemu (LE, 2011) No studies have so far examined carefully the welfare implications of land certification

4 Gender dimensions Female-headed households are often poor in non-land resources and often rent out their land (landlords) They tend to be less productive farmers Holden and Bezabih (2008) found that they also achieved lower land productivity on sharecropped out land More tenure insecure and lower bargaining power as landlords Could land certification strengthen their tenure security and bargaining power? More willing to rent out land? Increased productivity on rented out land? Enhanced welfare of female-headed (landlord) households?

5 Hypotheses H1) Land certification has contributed to enhanced land productivity over time on rented land, and especially so for female-headed households, H2) Land certification has enhanced household welfare over time, H3) Land certification has also enhanced household welfare of female-headed households that depend more on renting out their land.

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7 Land certificates in Tigray Simple one-page certificates Name of head of hh (husband not wife usually) Name, size and location of plots and names of neighbours

8 Tigray landscape

9 Data TigrayRegion: Household panel data survey Stratified random sample of 400 households in 16 communities Stratification based on population density, market access and agro-climatic variation Surveyed in 1998, 2001, 2003 and 2006 Farm plot level data (1998, 2001, 2006)»For study of land productivity on rented land Household level data (1998, 2001, 2003, 2006)»For study of effects on consumption expenditure, balanced panel of 292 hhs.

10 Methods Land productivity on rented land Non-parametric matching (on observables) Heckman selection model (unobservables) OLS and Pooled OLS Household welfare Household panel models with household fixed effects Alternative specifications to assess robustness y A CY S D CY * S OP / A e ht 0 1 ht 2 ht 3 ht 4 t 5 ht ht 6 ht ht h ht

11 Identification strategy Productivity and welfare effects may be delayed Time delay from investment till productivity improvement Time delay from productivity increased till consumption increase Use Years with certificate to identify a gradual impact Identification rests on the common trend assumption (after control for time constant unobserved heterogeneity)

12 Land productivity (log) on owner-operated and rented out plots by sex of household head and year Year --> Sex of household Owneroperated Rented out plots Owneroperated Rented out plots Owneroperated Rented out plots head Male- Mean Headed (m) St.err N Female- Mean Headed (f) St.err N t-test, f<m Prob(f<m)

13 Yield comparison on rented out plots of female and male landlords, matching on observable plot characteristics Year Matching method Number of treated observations: Female landlords Number of control observations: Male landlords ATT Std. Err Kernel Nearest neighbor 2001 Kernel Nearest neighbor 2006 Kernel t 2006 Nearest neighbor

14 Land productivity on rented out plots, Models with household random effects and village fixed effects by year Explanatory variables Sex of household head ** * (1=female, 0=male) (0.226) (0.214) (0.164) Plot characteristics Yes Yes Yes Village fixed effects Yes Yes Yes Constant 7.623*** 7.257*** 6.717*** (0.571) (0.48) (0.405) Number of observations Rho R-squared, overall

15 Descriptive statistics, welfare model Year Statistic measure Consumption expenditure per adult equivalent Years with certificate Sex of household head, 1=female, 0=male Operational farm size/own farm size Own farm size, ha 1997 Mean St.error N Mean St.error N Mean St.error N Mean St.error N Total Mean St.error

16 Welfare effects of land certification Household fixed effects models Explanatory variables Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Years with certificate * * (24.12) (24.55) (24.17) (24.58) Sex of household head *** *** 1.01 Female=1, male=0 (53.99) (70.26) (54.23) (69.92) Farm size per adult equivalent *** **** **** **** (31.32) (31.14) (31.49) (31.32) Sex of household head*years ** ** with certificate (14.87) (14.82) Operational holding size/farm *** **** size (13.51) (13.14) Dummy for year= (62.67) (63.11) (62.74) (63.16) Dummy for year= (123.6) (124.65) (123.95) (124.96) Dummy for year= (184.37) (185.53) (184.78) (185.92) Constant **** **** **** **** (40.79) (38.36) (44.17) (42.18) Prob > chi

17 Conclusions Low-cost land registration and certification has enhanced land productivity as well as welfare, and particularly so for female-headed households in Tigray Future research should focus on the impacts of changes in the land laws that came in 2006 Restrictions on land renting, max. 50% of farm Restrictions on migration, >2 years, land will be confiscated without compensation Enhancement of sustainable land management through local Land Administration Committees

18 Thank you!