| dc.description.abstract | Kenya has a 50 year history of ongoing land reform. However, with
multiple land tenure systems, including customary and statutory
systems, past tenure reforms have not resolved inherent land ownership
problems. These problems include weak land administration, inaccurate
recording of established occupancy rights, landlessness and land
disputes, and disempowerment of women and children through denial
of their land rights. Various aspects of land reform have been studied
previously, but not in the context of the relationship between security
of land tenure and the poverty situation. Poverty levels remain high
despite economic progress, owing to various factors, among them weak
land rights. Since land is a critical factor of production, prevailing land
rights may affect household production and economic welfare. This
study examines the potential link between ownership of a title deed as a
proxy for land rights and consumption expenditures or poverty. Using a
recent household survey data, the effect of ownership of titled land and
household poverty as represented by consumption expenditure is tested,
while controlling potential endogeneity of the tenure variable. The study
assumes that historical weaknesses in management of land allocations,
transfers, and registration are expressed in the prevailing challenges
such as landlessness and the limited land titling. The results show that
ownership of titled land is positively related with higher levels of per
adult equivalent household consumption expenditure or equivalently,
weak land property rights are positively correlated with poverty. The
key finding is that holding a secure title to land helps reduce poverty
at the household level. This study holds that by strengthening titling
mechanisms and increasing title registrations, one confers real rights
for productive use of land in Kenya, and this helps reduce poverty.
Specifically, this indicates the importance of hastening the process of title
registration through, in some cases, removing or subsidizing the cost of
title registration. With the evidence of historical infringement of land
ownership rights and related land disputes, the registration reforms
ought to be scaled up in conjunction with legal reforms to further protect
legitimate rights to land expressed in holding a title deed. | en |
