This research report examines three questions that are central to IFPRI research: How do property-rights institutions affect efficiency and equity? How are resources allocated within households? Why does this matter from a policy perspective? As part of a larger multicountry study on property rights to land and trees, this study focuses on the evolution from customary land tenure with communal ownership toward individualized rights, and how this shift affects women and men differently.This study’s key contribution is its multilevel econometric analysis of efficiency and equity issues.

In Ethiopian development policies, pastoralist areas have recently attracted more attention. However, much debate and policy advice is still based on assumptions that see a sedentary lifestyle as the desirable development outcome for pastoralist communities. This paper investigates current practices of collective action and how these are affected by changing property rights in the pastoralist and agro-pastoralist economies of three selected sites in eastern Ethiopia.

This paper examines the role of the extended family on investments in children, using data from a retrospective survey of three generations in the rural Philippines. Econometric results show that interactions between grandparent characteristics and child gender significantly affect the distribution of proposed land bequests between sons and daughters. However, grandparents significantly affect gender-specific investments in children's education only in resource-constrained families.

"This paper explores the puzzle of why the pastoral Maasai of Kajiado, Kenya, supported the individualization of their collectively held group ranches, an outcome that is inconsistent with theoretical expectation. Findings suggest that individuals and groups will seek to alter property rights in their anticipation of net gains from a new assignment, even as they seek to eliminate disadvantages that were present in the status quo property rights structure.

Rapid growth of demand for agricultural land is putting pressure on property rights systems, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, where customary tenure systems have provided secure land access. Patterns of gradual, endogenous change toward formalization are being challenged by rapid and large-scale demands from outsiders. Little attention has focused on the gender dimensions of this transformation.

This brief considers the benefits and costs of alternative tenure and institutional arrangements and the impact of existing legal and policy frameworks on the sustainability and equity of pastoral production systems under three categories of landownership: (1) state ownership; (2) individual ownership; and (3) common property... Achieving efficient, equitable, and sustainable rangeland management depends on the costs and benefits of alternative systems. These costs and benefits, in turn, depend on agroecological, sociocultural, and economic characteristics.

Customary land areas in Western Ghana have been evolving towards individualized ownership. Inherited and temporarily allocated family lands are being transferred to wives and children as inter-vivos gifts, to be planted with cocoa. Giving gifts is a way to circumvent the traditional Akan matrilineal land inheritance system in which land is transferred from a deceased man to his matrilineal relatives but not to his wife and children.

"Close to one billion people worldwide depend directly upon the drylands for their livelihoods. Because of their climatic conditions and political and economic marginalization drylands also have some of the highest incidents of poverty. Pastoral and sedentary production systems coexist in these areas and both very often use common property arrangements to manage access and use of natural resources. Despite their history of complementary interactions, pastoralists and sedentary farmers are increasingly faced with conflicting claims over land and other natural resources.

In 1997, CARE-Bangladesh undertook a livelihood security assessment of urban slum households in the cities of Tongi, Khulna and Bogra. Based on the findings of that study and a review of secondary literature, the SHAHAR (Supporting Household Activities for Health, Assets and Revenue) project was conceptualized and designed.

In 1987, an improved resource management system that incorporates velvet bean (Mucuna pruriens var. utilis) to address soil fertility and weed (Imperata cylindrica) infestation was introduced to the small-scale farmers in a densely populated area of the derived savannas in Benin Republic (West Africa). Six years later, an adoption study was conducted to assess factors driving the adoption process. Four types of land tenure systems based on mode of access to land were identified: divided inheritance, purchasing, gifts, and sharecropping/renting.

The devolution of natural resource management responsibility from the state to communities or local user groups has become a widespread trend that cuts across countries and resource sectors. Unlike claims to the contrary in policy narratives, devolution of control over resources from the state to local organizations does not necessarily lead to greater participation and empowerment of all stakeholders (Cleaver 1999).

Mexico’s Programa Nacional de Educación, Salud y Alimentación (PROGRESA) is a major government program aimed at developing the human capital of poor households. Targeting its benefits directly to the population in extreme poverty in rural areas, it seeks to alleviate current poverty through monetary and in-kind benefits, as well as to reduce future levels of poverty by encouraging investments in education, health, and nutrition.