Plans Fonciers Ruraux Impact Evaluation 2011, Baseline Survey - Benin

Abstract
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Throughout rural Sub-Saharan Africa, the allocation and enforcement of land rights involve a diverse and complex set of customary arrangements made and upheld by local stakeholders such as village chiefs, councils of elders, and land chiefs. Customary land tenure systems often coexist with formal land administration systems, where proof of ownership or of use rights is documented with registered titles or deeds. Yet only a small proportion of the population holds formal land titles for the land they de facto own. This lack of formal land rights may lead to under-investment and sub-optimal yields. Codification of private property rights within an effective legal framework should in theory increase agricultural investment and productivity, and spur economic development. Hence, the policy response to undocumented property rights has often been the “formalization” of land tenure (i.e., the incorporation of “informal”, customary, undocumented tenure claims into the formal system of property rights), often through the provision of freehold titles.

While land titling programs have met with relative success in rural and urban settings, the evidence from Africa is less positive. This contrast is perhaps due to oversimplified interventions that neglect the complexity of customary land relations in rural areas, the limited capacity of central land administrations for the delivery of titles, or the difficulties in establishing decentralized institutions. The distributional impacts of land formalization programs are also ambiguous: Despite some claims of the possibly deleterious effects of individualizing land rights for women, there is scant rigorous evidence from impact evaluations to support or refute these claims.

Benin is one of the countries in West Africa where the design and implementation of policies to consolidate land rights is furthest advanced. The Plan Foncier Rural (PFR), first tried in Côte d'Ivoire in 1989 and piloted in Benin since 1993, is a key policy experiment in this respect. The program is currently in the initial stages of a planned implementation scale-up in Benin. The objectives of the program are to improve tenure security and stimulate agricultural investment in rural areas through the registration of land rights.

The Plan Fonciers Ruraux Impact Evaluation presents early evidence from the first large-scale randomized-controlled trial of a land formalization policy. The study was designed to address the following questions and issues:
- What is the effect of the PFR on perceived and de facto tenure security?
- What is the effect of the PFR on land market participation and land prices?
- What is the effect of the PFR on investment in land and agricultural production and yields?
- Additional issues: off-farm activities and gender differentiated impacts

The study examines the links between land demarcation and investment in rural Benin in light of a model of agricultural production under insecure tenure. The demarcation process involved communities in the mapping and attribution of land rights; cornerstones marked parcel boundaries and offered lasting landmarks. Consistent with the model, improved tenure security under demarcation induces a shift toward long-term investment on treated parcels. This investment does not yet coincide with gains in agricultural productivity. The analysis also identifies significant gender specific effects. Female-managed landholdings in treated villages are more likely to be left fallow—an important soil fertility investment. Women further respond to an exogenous tenure security change by moving production away from relatively secure, demarcated land and toward less secure land outside the village to guard those parcels.

Geographic coverage
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The study gathered information on 3,507 households interviewed in 291 villages selected from 40 communes which cover 9 of Benin's 12 regions (départements) or first-level administrative divisions.

Analysis unit
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Household and Community

Kind of data
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Sample survey data [ssd]

Sampling procedure
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The sample was drawn using a sub-set of rural households from a national household survey from 2010. In total, 3,507 households were surveyed in 291 villages, of which 192 were selected to receive a PFR and 99 were randomly selected to serve as control villages, resulting in 66 observed lottery pools. In line with the identification strategy, this study focused on those households with at least one landholding in their village of residence: 85% of households had one landholding in the same village as their homestead, 9% had their landholding outside their village of residence, and 6% had no landholdings. This led to a working sample of 4,972 households, with detailed information on 6,094 parcels.

Mode of data collection
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Computer Assisted Personal Interview [capi]

Research instrument
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The multi-topic household survey instrument covered a detailed set of questions related to basic demographics, parcel land use, intra-household control of resources, and agricultural production. The land modules elicit a rich set of information on perceived and de facto tenure security, perceived rights, market participation, and investment at the parcel level, while the agricultural modules allow for productivity estimates at the agricultural plot level. A community questionnaire was also administered to a set of key respondents with diverse responsibilities in each village. It includes information on village-level demographics, infrastructure, social services, economic activities, and mode of land acquisition, land market activity, and conflicts.

摘要
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在撒哈拉以南非洲的农村地区，土地权利的分配与执行涉及由当地利益相关者，如村长、长老会及土地首领等制定并维护的一系列多样且复杂的习惯性安排。习惯性土地租用制度往往与正式土地管理制度并存，其中所有权或使用权证明以注册产权证或契约为证。然而，只有少数人口持有他们实际拥有的土地的正式土地产权。这种缺乏正式土地权利的现象可能导致投资不足和产出不理想。在有效的法律框架内对私人财产权进行编纂，理论上应增加农业投资和生产力，并促进经济发展。因此，对未记录的财产权的政策反应通常是土地租用制度的‘正式化’（即，将‘非正式的’、习惯性的、未记录的土地租用主张纳入正式的财产权体系中），通常通过提供永久产权的方式进行。
尽管土地登记计划在乡村和城市环境中取得了相对成功，但非洲的证据则不太积极。这种对比或许源于干预措施过于简化，忽视了乡村地区习惯性土地关系的复杂性，中央土地管理机构提供产权的能力有限，或建立分散化机构的困难。土地正式化计划的影响分布也是模糊的：尽管有关于为女性个体化土地权利可能产生有害影响的说法，但来自影响评估的严格证据却少之又少。
贝宁是西非国家中，在巩固土地权利政策的设计和实施方面进展最远的国家之一。1989年首次在科特迪瓦尝试，1993年以来在贝宁试点运行的农村土地计划（Plan Foncier Rural，简称PFR），是这方面的关键政策实验。该计划目前正处于贝宁计划实施规模扩大的初期阶段。该计划的目标是通过登记土地权利，改善土地租用安全并刺激农村地区的农业投资。
农村土地计划影响评估报告展示了关于土地正式化政策首次大规模随机对照试验的早期证据。该研究旨在解决以下问题和议题：
- PFR对感知的和实际的土地租用安全性的影响是什么？
- PFR对土地市场参与和土地价格的影响是什么？
- PFR对土地和农业生产的投资及产出影响是什么？
- 其他问题：非农活动和性别差异化影响
研究在不确定的土地租用制度下的农业生产模型背景下，考察了土地划界与贝宁农村投资之间的联系。划界过程涉及社区在绘制和分配土地权利；里程碑标记地块边界并提供了持久的地标。与模型一致，划界下的改善土地租用安全性促使对处理地块的长期投资。这种投资尚未与农业生产力增长相一致。分析还确定了显著的性别特定影响。接受处理的村庄中女性管理的土地更有可能被闲置——这是一个重要的土壤肥力投资。女性还对外部土地租用安全性的变化做出反应，将生产从相对安全的划界土地转移到村庄外的较不安全土地，以保护这些地块。
地理覆盖范围
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研究从涵盖贝宁12个地区（départements）或一级行政区域中的9个的40个社区中选取了291个村庄，对3,507户家庭进行了信息收集。
分析单位
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家庭和社区
数据类型
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样本调查数据 [ssd]
抽样程序
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样本是从2010年全国家庭调查中抽取的农村家庭子集。总共对291个村庄中的3,507户家庭进行了调查，其中192个村庄被选中接受PFR，99个村庄被随机选中作为控制村庄，从而产生了66个观察到的抽签池。根据识别策略，本研究专注于那些在其居住村庄至少拥有一块土地的家庭：85%的家庭在其宅邸所在的村庄拥有一块土地，9%的家庭在其居住村庄之外拥有土地，6%的家庭没有土地。
数据收集方式
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计算机辅助个人访谈 [capi]
研究工具
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多主题家庭调查工具涵盖了一系列与基本人口统计、地块土地用途、家庭内资源控制以及农业生产相关的问题。土地模块搜集了关于感知的和实际的土地租用安全性、感知权利、市场参与和地块级别投资的丰富信息，而农业模块允许对农业地块级别的生产力进行估算。还对每个村庄中具有不同职责的关键受访者进行了社区问卷调查。它包括关于村庄级别人口统计、基础设施、社会服务、经济活动以及土地获取方式、土地市场活动和冲突的信息。