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This paper estimates the poverty reducing impact of land access in rural Uganda. The paper firstly states that land acquired through markets or otherwise may play an important role for rural household welfare. Conversely, there are concerns that poverty reduction effect of access to land through the market may be inadequate, due to land markets that can increase land concentration among the rich and inefficient producers. In this context, the paper argues that poverty reduction effect of land can be effective when more efficient farmers are able to acquire additional land through a mode of land access with stronger welfare increasing effects.The paper notes that land, whether accessed through the market or not, is an important determinant of household welfare. Indeed, households with more of owned land, operated land, or market-accessed land would gain a significant welfare-improving effect of better land access. However, this is conditioned to controlling for both endogeneity in land access and unobserved heterogeneity effects on welfare. The paper's findings indicate significant poverty reduction effects of increased land access in form of owned, operated and market-accessed land. Furthermore, the poverty reduction effect for land accessed through the market was significantly larger than the poverty reduction effect of land accessed through inheritance. The paper argues that this is likely to be the case because land markets, to a larger extent, transfer land to more efficient producers. The paper concludes that land markets enhance efficiency as well as contribute to poverty reduction.
