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  3. 2022
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  5. Effects of Land Property Rights: Cases from Three Continents
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Effects of Land Property Rights: Cases from Three Continents

Paper Session

Friday, Jan. 7, 2022 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM (EST)

Hosted By: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association
  • Chairs:
    Robert Zabawa, Tuskegee University
  • Spiro Stefanou, USDA Economic Research Service

Heirs’ Property in an Urban Context

Sarah Stein
,
Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta
Ann Carpenter
,
Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta

Abstract

Heirs’ property owners are susceptible to family land loss due to the precarity of their shared ownership structure. They are also often limited in their access to the economic value of their land since they do not have clear, marketable title. Although often discussed as a rural issue, heirs’ property manifests in urban areas, as well, where these properties have spillover effects, particularly in historically disinvested communities that experience deeper susceptibility to shocks and stresses. Using the Jacksonville, FL area as a case study, we first estimate the extent of residential heirs’ property in this area. We do this using property records data. Based on these figures, we address the cumulative impacts these properties have on individual families, neighborhoods, and the broader urban region. We make efforts to account for the economic impact of these properties, on an individual family level as well as a community level. We also consider the intersection of heirs’ property with system shocks, such as recent hurricanes, as well as historic practices of racial exclusion. Our research finds that urban heirs’ property in this setting share many characteristics prior research has associated with rural heirs’ properties. Heirs’ properties tend to be found within lower-income, low-wealth (in terms of housing equity), low educational attainment, and racial and ethnic minority communities. Our regression results also indicated that neighborhoods with a higher share of the population that is Black had a significant and positive impact on heirs’ property concentration. Our spatial analysis of historic redlining practices indicated significant overlap between the concentration of heirs’ property and those areas explicitly excluded from mainstream financial investment on the basis of a neighborhood’s racial composition. We estimate that $5 billion in housing value may be locked or vulnerable to land loss in Duval County due to heirs’ property status. These properties tend to be older, have elevated vulnerability to flooding based on claims filed after Hurricane Irma, and are less likely to be insured, meaning that they are ill-prepared and at high risk for events that could further depreciate or destroy homes owned by heirs as tenants in common.

Investment Impacts of Gendered Land Rights in Customary Tenure Systems: Substantive and Methodological Insights from Malawi

Klaus Deininger
,
World Bank
Fang Xia
,
University of International Business and Economics
Talip Kilic
,
World Bank
Heather Moylan
,
World Bank

Abstract

Compared with the vast literature on the investment and productivity effects of land rights
formalization, little attention has been paid to the impact of variation in individuals’ tenure security under customary tenure regimes. This is a serious gap not only because most of Africa’s rural land is held under informal arrangements, but also because gradual erosion of long-term rights by women and migrants is often an indication of traditional systems coming under stress. Using a unique survey experiment in Malawi, the analysis shows that (i) having long-term land rights of bequest and sale has a significant impact on investment and cash crop adoption; (ii) women’s land rights of bequest and sale, joint with local institutional arrangements, can amplify the magnitude of such effects; and (iii) the effects found here can be obscured by measurement error associated with traditional approaches to survey data collection on land ownership and rights.

Influence of the Land Titling Policy on Land Abandonment in China

Kai Liu
,
Zhongkai University of Agriculture and Engineering
Mingzhong Luo
,
South China Agricultural University
Krishna Paudel
,
USDA Economic Research Service
Wenjue Zhu
,
Guangdong University of Foreign Language

Abstract

Land Titling, a policy that aims to increase market transactions of farmland by providing land property rights to landowners in China, may affect the peasant households’ farmland cultivation decisions. We identify homogenous farm households by using the model-based clustering analysis technique because of this method’s ability to model the observations based on a pre-specified model. We estimate the influences of the Land Titling Policy (LTP) on households’ farmland abandonment decisions within each cluster by using a fractional semiparametric model. We use nationwide in-person interview data collected in 2015-16 from randomly selected Chinese peasant households. Results show the LTP has a positive influence on land abandonment, especially for households under unstable land property rights. Specifically, we found the land titling policy significantly reduced abandonment by 2.9% to 3.1% for the clusters with secured land property rights. By contrast, the LTP had a stronger negative effect on land abandonment by 8.2% for the cluster with unsecured land property rights. We conclude that the LTP reduces the land abandonment problem by enhancing land property rights, especially in an unsecured property rights scenario.

Keywords: land titling policy, land abandonment, land property rights, clustering, fractional response, semiparametric model

JEL classifications: Q15, Q18, R23

Discussant(s)
Michael Carter
,
University of California-Davis
JEL Classifications
  • Y9 - Other