Like every Friday, from Raj Nallari and Breda Griffith's lecture notes.
Land Titling and Registration
A further legitimate role for government is the implementation of second-generation reforms that address insecurity of land rights through registration and titling. Land registration and titling, a type of “modern property rights regime” (Jacoby and Minten, 2005) formalizes land ownership and has a number of advantages:
- it can deliver large productivity gains; and
- it is especially beneficial when indigenous tenure systems are weak, when the return on investment in land is high and where collateralized lending is in place.
Second-generation reforms have been in operation in Latin America over the last decade where traditionally an unequal distribution of land existed. Both the World Bank and the Inter American Development Bank grant funds for the purposes of land titling and registration.
While land titling and registration has largely been viewed as positive for the Latin America region, it is not clear that the reforms would be successful in every region. In particular, the effectiveness of titling and land registration has been questioned for Sub Saharan Africa (Atwood, 1990; Migot-Adholla et al., 1991). It is felt that “Sub-Saharan Africa lacks the infrastructure, factor market development and other prerequisites for land tenure reform to promote agricultural intensification and productivity growth” (Jacoby and Minten, 2005).
Moreover, the incidences of land titling in Africa are relatively scarce, an unsurprising factor given that the majority of the land is unsecured. Some tenure reform has taken place in Kenya and the resulting literature suggests little economic impact (Place and Migot-Adholla, 1998; Carter et al., 1997). Jacoby and Minten (2005) conclude that a formal land titling system should not be extended to rural Madagascar based on their study of land investment, land productivity and land value between titled and untitled plots worked by the same household. They found no significant effect of having a title on land-specific investment and correspondingly weak effects of having a title on land productivity and land values.
Indeed, as noted by Jacoby and Minten (2005) proceeding with land titling and registration for an indigenous tenure system that is unsecured may not reduce that insecurity to any appreciable extent, if at all and could even increase that insecurity. In most cases of unsecured land, a type of informal system evolves over time with respect to land use and transfer within a community. Imposing a formal structure on arrangements that have worked for years may just result in opportunities for rent-seeking. These concerns are captured by Atwood (1990) and quoted in Jacoby and Minten (2005) as:
“Members of a local community may face far fewer risks of loss of land under the existing informal system than an outsider would face. In addition, while land registration might reduce the risks faced by an outsider, it may increase the risks and insecurity faced by local people as family members or peripheral land claimants jockey to see in whose name a parcel will be registered…For many local people, therefore, registration can create rather than reduce uncertainty and conflict over land rights.”
Jacoby and Minten (2005) and others (Atwood, 1990; Bruce, Migot-Adholla and Atherton, 1997) go on to argue that much of the demand for land titling in Africa derives from the population seeking to keep the government from allocating the land to someone else rather than a demand for new rules of tenure.
In general, and as stated at various points in the text, land policies need to take into consideration the historical and regional context, the level of institutional development and incentives. Thus for former Soviet countries, farm restructuring was necessary in the context of decollectivization and land reform. In some East and West Africa countries, post conflict land policy needs to be implemented. Across all regions, incentives are needed to guard against negative externalities and the protection of nature and cultural resources. Government has recourse to taxation, regulation and land use planning to address these issues.
Conclusion
For the poor in particular, access to and ownership of land affects their capacity for moving out of poverty. The developing world is however characterized by land inequalities with negative consequences for economic growth and poverty reduction. Certain groups, the rural poor and women, suffer more and land inequality has been shown to impact on opportunities for education, institutions and financial development. Government’s role in bringing about land equality continues to focus on land titling and registration with positive and negative implications for ownership and access by the poor.
Next week: we have now finished this course on "Economic Policies to Reduce Poverty in Developing Countries". Next week we will start a new course on "Gender and Macroeconomic Policy", also based on Raj Nallari and Breda Griffith's lecture notes.
