Measuring Land Tenure at the Individual Level : Lessons from Methodological Research in Armenia
Evidence indicates that land rights are strongly associated with several indicators of well-being and development outcomes, including access to credit, resilience to shocks, productivity, and bargaining power. Accurately capturing gender difference...
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| Language: | English English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2022
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099453508162217176/IDU01d4176a606baa04a680b16706d9ebf6ef268 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/37896 |
| Summary: | Evidence indicates that land rights
are strongly associated with several indicators of
well-being and development outcomes, including access to
credit, resilience to shocks, productivity, and bargaining
power. Accurately capturing gender differences in land
rights is thus critical for development policy, prompting
the need to shift from household-level land rights data
collection to collecting more and better individual-level
data on land rights. The importance of individual land
rights has been recognized in the Sustainable Development
Goals (SDG) agenda, with the inclusion of two key indicators
on land rights—SDG indicators 1.4.2 and 5.a.1. Although
clear guidance exists for computing and monitoring these,
the choice of data collection methods may influence the
resulting indicators and the understanding of the underlying
land rights. Specifically, research has shown that the use
of proxy respondents in the collection of data on assets,
including land, results in a biased understanding of men’s
and women’s holdings vis-à-vis self-reporting. This paper
uses data from a methodological experiment in Armenia to
assess the implications of survey design—Snamely, respondent
strategy and the level of disaggregation of land data—Son
the measurement of individual land rights and SDG indicator
monitoring. The findings suggest that in the context of
Armenia, the measurement of SDG 5.a.1 and 1.4.2 (a) is
robust to respondent approach and data disaggregation level,
driven largely by the high rates of documentation.
Meanwhile, land rights that are less objective, such as the
right to bequeath and perception of tenure security, are
sensitive to these survey design choices. |
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