Land property rights and household take-up of development programs: Evidence from land certification program in Ethiopia

Adamie, Birhanu Addisu

doi:10.1016/j.worlddev.2021.105626

Abstract

Access to secure land plays a key role in the socio-economic development of agricultural households. Since 1998, large-scale land certification programs aimed at strengthening the land property rights of agricultural households in Ethiopia have been implemented across regions to varying degrees. Using a three-period, large-scale nationally representative panel dataset from Ethiopia, this paper investigates the importance of access to secure land property right in the form of land certification for household take-up of agricultural development interventions that aim to improve household agricultural productivity and sustainable land use at a community level. We studied the take-up of agricultural extension packages and participation in community level sustainable land and water management programs as outcome variables. To account for potential endogeneity in the allocation of certificates and other confounding factors, we applied different panel data methods including instrumental variable approach. We find that access to secure property rights have a positive and significant effect on household take-up agricultural development interventions: agricultural extension packages and sustainable land and water management interventions. Additionally, we find that land certificates significantly predict household adoption of chemical fertilizers. (c) 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Keywords

Land property rights; Land certification; Agricultural extension programs; Development interventions; Ethiopia

Published in

World Development
2021, volume: 147, article number: 105626
Publisher: PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD

SLU Authors

Adamie, Birhanu Addisu
- Department of Economics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences

Global goals (SDG)

SDG1 No poverty
SDG2 Zero hunger
SDG16 Peace, justice and strong institutions

UKÄ Subject classification

Economics

Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2021.105626

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/113465