This paper evaluates effects of community-level women's property and inheritance rights on women's economic outcomes using a 13 year longitudinal panel from rural Tanzania. In the preferred model specification, inverse probability weighting is applied to a woman-level fixed effects model to control for individual-level time invariant heterogeneity and attrition. Results indicate that changes in women's property and inheritance rights are significantly associated with women's employment outside the home, self-employment and earnings. Results are not limited to sub-groups of marginalised women. Findings indicate lack of gender equity in sub-Saharan Africa may inhibit economic development for women and society as a whole.
There is a renewed interest in whether land reforms can contribute to market development and poverty reduction in Africa. This paper assesses effects on the allocative efficiency of the land rental market of the low-cost approach to land registration and certification of restricted property rights that was implemented in Ethiopia in the late 1990s. Four rounds of a balanced household panel from 16 villages in northern Ethiopia are analysed, showing that land certification initially enhanced land rental market participation of (potential) tenant and landlord households, especially those that are headed by females.
Household survey data for 1983–2000 from India's National Sample Survey Organisation are used to examine the impact of credit on self-employment among men and women in rural labour households. Results indicate that credit access encourages women's self-employment as own-account workers and employers, while it discourages men's self-employment as unpaid family workers. Ownership of land, a key form of collateral, also serves as a strong predictor of self-employment. Among the lower castes in India, self-employment is less likely for scheduled castes prone to wage activity, but more likely for scheduled tribes prone to entrepreneurial work.