Houngbedji, KennethGoldstein, MarkusKondylis, FlorenceO'Sullivan, MichaelSelod, Harris2016-11-282016-11-282016-02https://hdl.handle.net/10986/25453Women in Sub-Saharan Africa are less likely than men to own land. They also use less land and have lower tenure security over the land that they use. This gap is costly in terms of lost productive output. The early results showed that improved tenure security through land demarcation increased long-term investments in cash crops and trees and erased the gender gap in land fallowing - a key soil fertility investment. It is important that interventions cover as much of a household’s landholdings as possible: the authors found that some women shifted their agricultural production to plots of land that did not benefit from demarcation so that they can guard these less secure and less productive plots. The rural land use plans (plans fonciers ruraux (PFR)) in Benin represent a more decentralized, low-cost approach to land rights formalization. The PFR program is innovative in its focus on the formalization of existing customary rights of individual landholders. The objectives of the program are to improve tenure security and stimulate agricultural investment in rural areas. The World Bank’s Africa gender innovation lab, in collaboration with researchers from the development research group and the Paris school of economics, set out to evaluate the PFR program’s impact through a randomized controlled trial. This study provides the first set of experimental evidence on the causal impact of a large-scale land formalization program.Partout en Afrique subsaharienne, les décideurs cherchent à trouver des instruments pour renforcer les droits fonciers des possesseurs terriens et des agriculteurs en zone rurale, là où l’accès aux terres et à la propriété foncière est majoritairement régi par les usages coutumiers. De façon générale, la coutume ne reconnait souvent aux femmes que des droits secondaires d’utilisation des terres, acquis par l’intermédiaire d’un époux ou d’un parent de sexe masculin. En cas de décès de leur conjoint ou en cas de divorce, elles peuvent donc perdre leurs droits coutumiers non sanctionnés par un droit de propriété légalement reconnu. L’absence de droits fonciers solidement établis peut se traduire par des sous-investissements et des rendements agricoles moindres tant pour les hommes que pour les femmes.en-USCC BY 3.0 IGOLANDSLANDLANDOWNERSPRODUCTIONHOUSEHOLDSGENDERAGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIONPROPERTY RIGHTSINFORMATIONINVESTMENTSAGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIVITYSOIL FERTILITYLAND RIGHTSPROPERTYPROPERTY REGISTRATIONWOMENAGRICULTURALRESEARCHFARMERSOWNERSHIPLAND TENURETENURECROPSECONOMICSLAND USELAND ADMINISTRATIONSOILAFRICA GENDER POLICYGENDER INNOVATION LABWOMEN AND PROPERTY RIGHTSBriefWorld Bank10.1596/25453