Impacts of Joint Land Rights Titling on Women Empowerment: Evidence from Ethiopia

Adane Dabissa

Master Thesis

Development Economics Group, Wageningen University

Wageningen August, 2013

Impacts of Joint Land Rights Titling on Women Empowerment: Evidence from Ethiopia

Adane Dabissa

Master Thesis

Supervisors: Pr. dr. Erwin Bulte Mr. Mequanint Melesse

Development Economics Group

Wageningen University August, 2013

Acknowledgment

First of all, thanks to almighty God in which nothing could be fruitful without his good will. Next, I would like to thank my supervisors Prof. dr. Erwin Bulte and co-supervisor Mr. Mequanint Biset (a PhD fellow) for their invaluable advice and support. I am also grateful to the Woreda administration officers of Womberma, Bure and Jabi Tehnan woredas. My appreciation also goes to the following kebeles heads of administration offices and DAs - Dened, Yergen, koki, Kentefen, Wazengez, Alefa Basie, Fatan Santom, Gedam Lijamor, Gulim Denj, Menkusa Abadegoma, Guay Wubishet, and Goref Kwencha. In addition, I would like to thank all the twelve enumerators for their dedicated and skillful data collection without whom the tough work of data collection would be difficult. Moreover, my gratitude goes to Bahir Dar University and Wageningen University for their support and collaboration for this research to become real. At last, my deep gratitude goes to NUFFIC for supporting me in financial matters during my whole Master study in the Netherlands through their fellowship grant called Netherland Fellowship Program (NFP).

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Table of Contents Lists of tables...... V Lists of figures ...... V Abbreviations ...... V Abstract ...... VI 1. Introduction ...... 1 2. Literatures review and conceptual framework ...... 4 2.1. Concepts and importance of land rights ...... 4 2.2. Women empowerment ...... 4 2.3. Empirical literatures review ...... 6 2.4. Conceptual framework ...... 8 3. The case of Ethiopia ...... 10 3.1. Land rights in Ethiopia ...... 10 3.2. Tenure system in Amhara region (past and present) ...... 11 3.3. The land registration process ...... 13 3.4. Study area description ...... 14 4. Data and empirical strategy ...... 16 4.1. Data ...... 16 4.1.1. Survey description ...... 16 4.1.2. Public Goods Game ...... 24 4.2. Methodology ...... 28 4.2.1. Propensity score matching method ...... 29 4.2.2. Econometric strategy: Tobit Model ...... 33 5. Results and discussions ...... 34 5.1. Propensity score matching results ...... 34 5.1.1. ATT estimation ...... 34 5.1.2. Matching quality assessment ...... 42 5.2. Tobit regression results ...... 44 6. Conclusions ...... 47 References ...... 49 Appendix ...... 52 A. Women empowerment indicator categories ...... 52 B. Hypothesized explanatory variables ...... 54 C. Experiment (game) protocol ...... 56

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Lists of tables Table 1: Households sample size by woreda ...... 16 Table 2: Summary statistics of explanatory variables ...... 19 Table 3: Explanatory variables ...... 20 Table 4: Dependent Variables ...... 24 Table 5: Summary statistics of game...... 27 Table 6: Program selection equation ...... 35 Table 7: Average treatment effect and sensitivity analysis results (using all covariates) ...... 40 Table 8: Average treatment effect and sensitivity analysis results (using exogenous covariates only) 41 Table 9: PSM using kernel matching and covariate balance ...... 43 Table 10: Robustness of results to matching methods and matching quality of kernel method ...... 44 Table 11: Tobit regression ...... 46

Lists of figures Figure 1: Conceptual framework ...... 9 Figure 2: Study woredas map ...... 15 Figure 3: Histogram of propensity score distribution ...... 31

Abbreviations ATT ...... Average Treatment Effect CIA ...... Conditional Independence Assumption CSA ...... Central Statistical Agency of Ethiopia DAs ...... Development Agents ETB ...... Ethiopian Birr FDRE ...... Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia GDP ...... Gross Domestic Product HH ...... Households LAC ...... Land Administration Committee LUAD ...... Land Use Administration Desk NGO ...... Non-Governmental Organization PSM ...... Propensity Score Matching SNNP ...... Southern Nations and Nationalities and peoples TLU ...... Tropical Livestock Unit USD ...... United States Dollar

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Abstract This study examines the impacts of joint land titling in Ethiopia on women empowerment. The study employees a combination of propensity score matching (PSM) and experimental approach, using cross-sectional data of 325 households from three districts (Womberma, Bure and Jabi Tehnan) of Amhara region. The findings of this study reveal a robust, positive and significant impact of joint titling of land rights for women on different dimensions of women empowerment measures. Generally, from the PSM analysis, the empirical result indicates that joint titled women are more likely to be empowered in most dimensions of women empowerment, but not all, compared to untitled women. Considering specifically, the results also imply that joint titled women are more likely to participate in community activities, to have local organizational capacity, to be aware of their land rights, to feel tenure security and dare to protect their land rights, and to have freedom of physical mobility and autonomy than untitled women. However, no difference in household decision making power is observed between the two groups of women. The tobit regression result of field experiment data also supports the results of the propensity score matching.

Key words – Ethiopia, joint titling, land rights, impact assessment, propensity score matching, experiment

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1. Introduction Recently, gender gaps in land rights have received attention from both development practitioners and activists alike. Land rights are seen as a development tool to expand the opportunity sets of those, such as women, who have the least resources, voice and capabilities in the absence of policy interventions (World Bank, 2006).Women’s land rights are put in the fore front of development debates as a way to realize human rights, increase productivity, empower women, and promote welfare and wellbeing, like interventions aimed at improving girls’ education, health, employment, access to credit, and market participation. Agarwal (1994) argued that the gender gap in the ownership and control of property rights is the single most critical contributor to the persistent gender gap in economic welfare, social status and employment.

In many developing countries, women do not have equal rights to men with respect to land ownership and inheritance. Deere and Doss (2006) stated that the available evidence on the gender asset gap is significant, and that the ability of women to accumulate wealth is influenced by the state, the family, the community, and the market. They argue that women’s asset ownership is associated with empowerment and individual well being, so that increased ownership contributes to economic growth and development. Empowering poor people, particularly women, by facilitating the investment in their asset base and access to resources is one of the strategies followed by the World Bank to reduce poverty in developing countries (World Bank, 2000).

Land remains a strategic asset for the livelihood of the majority in most developing countries. Particularly, it is at the heart of social, political and economic life in most African economies, which continue to heavily rely on agriculture and natural resources for their GDP, consumption, employment and export revenue (Commission for Africa, 2005). In Sub- Saharan Africa, the view of women as a mere household member without autonomous access to property has led to uncertainty and instability in their lives, especially when they become widowed, divorced, or in a context of polygamy (Joireman, 2006). This uncertainty and lack of autonomous property rights is problematic given the economic responsibilities of women in the rural and urban economies of Africa.

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It is unknown to what extent the de jure rights, given in the recent national and regional land proclamations in Ethiopia, have positive ramifications for women’s rights and empowerment and whether these rights have improved the position of women. Also, the extent to which women are able to enforce their rights de facto remains unexplored, which motivates our study. This research addresses this gap by studying the impacts of joint titling of land rights in Ethiopia on women empowerment focusing in Amhara region. We analyze the causal effects of joint titling of land rights on women empowerment using survey and experimental data. We use women empowerment indicators measured along a multitude of dimensions, such as participation in household decision-making and community activities, membership in local organizations (e.g. women associations), knowledge of female land rights, tenure security, physical mobility and autonomy, and an overall women empowerment indicator. In addition, we construct a women empowerment index based on a public good game data as another indicator.

Amhara region is a suitable research area for the study for a number of reasons. First, the program has been implemented as a joint titling scheme in which husbands and wives are given joint titles to their land, and it has been a reasonable time period since its introduction in 2000. Second, there is a prevalence of the customary system, which gives dominance to men in virtually all dimensions of decision-making. Women are considered incapable to lead and are excluded from community activities by holding a traditional image that women’s place is in the kitchen. Third, there is a customary land tenure system (patrilineal inheritance and virilocal residence) which does not recognize women’s land rights. Since there are districts where land registration and certification has not been implemented yet, we are able to identify a credible counterfactual via the use of propensity score matching. We measure causal effects of the program by comparing women in titled districts to women in districts where the land titling is yet to be implemented.

This research project contributes to the existing literatures in three ways. First, this research contributes by filling the knowledge gap on the empowerment impact of joint land titling on women at household level. To our knowledge, only Holden and Tefera (2008) have dealt with this issue at household level, so far. Wiig (2012) has looked at the same issue, but his research focused on limited dimensions of women empowerment. Second, our study combines data from survey and field experiment, providing several complementary measures of empowerment. As noted by Mahmud et al. (2011), indicators of women empowerment need

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to be specified and measured across various dimensions and different pathways. Accordingly, we employed a set of indicators to measure this multi-faceted concept.

Our results demonstrate that joint titling of land rights empowers women as measured among most indicators of women empowerment, but not all. We found strong significant differences between joint titled and untitled women in community participation, local organizational capacity, knowledge of their land rights and tenure security. However, we found only modest significance on indicators of physical mobility and autonomy, and no significant difference on decision-making of the household. Overall, our women empowerment indicator is significantly different between the two groups of women, as is our empowerment index based on experimental data.

This report is organized as follows. In the second chapter, we discuss theoretical and empirical literatures and provide the conceptual framework used in the study. The third chapter deals with the background to the study area, historical background of land rights in Ethiopia and in our study region, and the land registration process in Amhara region. Data and methodologies are discussed in chapter four. The fifth chapter presents the results of the study and discusses the main findings. Finally, the report concludes with the main results of this study in chapter six.

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2. Literatures review and conceptual framework

2.1. Concepts and importance of land rights Agarwal (1994) defined rights as “claims that are legally and socially recognized and enforceable by an external legitimized authority, be it a village-level institution or some higher level judicial or executive body of the state”. Land rights can be understood as a variety of legitimate claims to land and the benefits and products produced on that land (Meinzen-Dick et al, 1997). Land rights can also be in the form of ownership or usufruct. According to Agarwal (1994), when considering the women’s rights to land, a distinction between formal ownership (de jure) and control (de facto) over land should be made. In this study, land rights for women are defined as usufruct ownership of land.

In his book: The Other Path and The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else, de Soto (2000) explains the importance of property rights in promoting prosperity. He argued that secure property rights strengthen the incentives for owners to make long-term capital investments and promote the ability of owners to use their property as collateral to secure loans to finance capital investment. He also argued that land titling provides the means to secure property rights. However, Williamson (2010) did not find support for the later argument of de Soto in her analysis of the effect of land titling in Peru.

Agarwal (1994), in her discussion of the need for independent rights in arable land for South Asian women, argued that women’s right to arable land contributes to welfare of the household and the society at large, efficiency in agricultural productivity, equality and empowerment of women with men which they traditionally could not enjoy for long time. The outcomes of natural resource management policies and projects in terms of efficiency, environmental sustainability, equity, and empowerment of resource users can also be improved by giving attention to gender differences in property rights (Meinzen-Dick et al., 1997). Allendorf (2007) compared different sources of empowerment and found that the effect of land ownership is comparable to that of education and employment, though the later received much more attention than land rights.

2.2. Women empowerment Until recently, while household preference is considered as similar in the unitary model (e.g. Becker, 1991), Manser and Brown (1980) introduced differences in individual preferences within a collective bargaining model and opting out of marriage as the threat point. Lundberg and Pollack (1993) used reduced effort and refusal to share output while still married as the

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threat point. They assumed household members control their own work effort and payoff from individual owned assets while married. As pointed out by Agarwal (1997), social norms and culture in general, as well as individual knowledge and ability, also enter the bargaining model.

Gender redistribution of assets (in our case land through joint titling) will, according to these theories, increase her share of surplus in a Nash bargaining model. First, joint titling of land empower women through improving their threat point of divorce since by law, a woman will now keep half of the land in case of divorce. Therefore, the risks of demanding influence in household matters, which ultimately might lead to marriage break down, will reduce. According to Lundberg and Pollack (1993), it means reducing the utility of the partner by refusing, for example, to rent-out land or to use the land and products from it. Finally, a woman’s land ownership implies that she contributes more to the common good of the household, which gives her a strong voice through the general norms of “influence according to contribution” (Sen, 1990). However, altruism still plays an important role in household decision making, implying it is probably a mix of the unitary and the separate sphere household model (Meinzen-Dick and Quisumbing, 2008).

Empowerment is broadly defined as the strengthening of freedom of choice and actions to shape one’s life. It includes control over resources and decisions (Narayan, 2005). According to Narayan, poor people lack this freedom due to their powerlessness in a range of formal and informal institutions. He recognized powerlessness is embedded in unequal institutional relations and that led him to adopt an institutional definition of empowerment. In his own words:

Empowerment is the expansion of assets and capabilities of poor people to participate in, negotiate with, influence, control, and hold accountable institutions that affect their lives.

This definition is helpful in understanding inequalities between poor people and the state, markets or civil society as well as gender inequalities even within the household. Land reform is one of the institutional reform elements that fits into this definition.

A broad definition of poverty includes poverty in rights, knowledge and decision-making power. Using the above definitions of empowerment and poverty in poor society setting, empowerment of women can be seen as a poverty reduction strategy since women are the

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poorest of the poor due to their limited rights to assets, inheritance, participation, mobility and protection (Holden and Tefera, 2008).

Naila Kabeer also defined empowerment as ‘the expansion in people’s ability to make strategic life choices in a context where this ability was previously denied to them (Kabeer, 1999). Kabeer asserted that ‘women empowerment is about the process by which those who have been denied the ability to make strategic life choices acquire such ability’. According to her, the ability to exercise choice incorporates three inter-related dimensions: (a) resources (resources to do a certain action), (b) agency (the ability to do it), and (c) achievement (whether the desired outcome is in one’s interest). In this regard, women empowerment depends on women’s access to resources. In our case, increasing their land ownership (individually or through joint ownership) can empower them by increasing their agency to do actions which in turn lead them to achieve their goals.

For the empowerment of poor people (among which includes women in developing countries) through institutional reform (in our case joint land rights registration and certification), there are four key elements of empowerment that must underlie the institutional reform. These are access to information, inclusion and participation, accountability and local organizational capacity (Narayan, 2005). Narayan provided extensive cross disciplinary ways to measure empowerment and acknowledged context-specific measurement of empowerment. Mahmud et al. (2011) noted that indicators of women empowerment need to be specified and measured across various dimensions and different pathways. Considering the multi-dimensionality of women empowerment, we adopt a broad perspective and measure empowerment based on the above key elements.

2.3. Empirical literatures review For the past decades, many researchers have analyzed the impact of tenure security on land related investment, productivity, and land-rental market participation (Deininger and Jin, 2006; Holden et al., 2009; Deininger et al., 2009; and Holden et al., 2011). However, few studies focus on the role of women. Even though there is some progress in assessing the impact of titling programs on economic outcomes (in particular in Ethiopia), we are far from empirically vindicating their impact on empowerment of women.

Two recent studies have tried to assess the impact of joint titling on women in Ethiopia in terms of economic outcomes. Holden et al. (2011) find that land registration and certification has a significant and positive effect on the participation of female-headed households as

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landlords in the land rental market, and Bezabih and Holden (2010) have explored the impact of land registration and certification on productivity of female-headed households. Females are believed to be systematically more tenure insecure than males. They conclude that land registration and certification has only a modest gain in terms of productivity for female- headed households while it considerably boosts overall farm-level productivity. This may indicates that female-headed households are unable to enjoy the full benefits of the program.

Nevertheless, evaluating the consequences of the land reform in view of its broad objectives of strengthening gender equality and women’s land right entails a systematic investigation of its impact on various gender-dimensions. One study that aims to measure the broader gender impacts of joint land registration and certification is Holden and Tefera (2008). They found that the inclusion of women’s name on land certificates increased the perception that women would be able to keep the land after divorce or death of their husband. They also found that after the reform wives had more to say about land rental decisions, reflecting the reporting requirement of such decisions to village level administration. Their study further revealed that land registration and certification has contributed to reducing the number of border disputes and inheritance disputes, and increasing the incentive to plant trees. In addition, poorer households (particularly women) have the same probability of receiving land certificates as less poor households, making land registration and certification wealth neutral. However, focusing on early impacts of the land registration and certification on women, it was perhaps before the reform had actually produced changes with respect to the amended rules and improved rights of women.

When we look at analysis based on other countries, Allendorf (2007) explored whether women’s land rights empower them and benefit young children’s health in Nepal. The author found significant associations between women’s land rights, and empowerment and child health. Nepali women who owned land are more likely to have the final say in household decisions, and their young children are less likely to be severely underweight. Comparing different sources of empowerment, the author found that land ownership is just as effective as education and employment though, none of these sources of empowerment are influential as women’s place in the family structure (wife of household head) in determining women’s decision making power in Nepal.

Wiig (2012) studied the same issue in Peru. In his comparison of women in titled communities versus untitled communities, he found that women in titled communities

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participate significantly more in household decision-making. The overall participation rate for women in the realized decisions on 26 categories is 70.2 percent for titled communities and 64.9 percent for untitled communities. His analysis showed a positive effect of joint titling on women’s household decision-making power. He compared communities who got the legal status of Recognized Peasant Communities (CCR) with common property rights to land with others who got joint titling which he defined as Private Communities (CP). Our study is different from his study since we used multi-dimensional indicators for measuring women empowerment.

There might be a certain degree of endogeneity between joint titling and women empowerment; for example, already more empowered women may have easier access to joint title. Researchers have attempted to mitigate the potential endogeneity by using assets brought to marriage which is assumed to be exogenous to the current empowerment level as a control (Allendorf, 2007; Quisumbing & Maluccio, 2003; Wiig et al, 2011 and Wiig, 2012). Similarly, we also employed assets brought to marriage to mitigate potential endogeniety problem.

2.4. Conceptual framework The conceptual framework used for measuring women empowerment is shown in figure 1 below. As shown in the framework, women empowerment is anticipated to be the effect of two main factors: joint land right certification of women and other demographic, socio- economic, community conditions and traditional norms that prevail in the study area (see appendix B for details). These other factors, which represent the setting and resource access conditions of women, include: women’s demographic situation (e.g. presence of children above 15 years that live in the house), women’s economic situation (e.g. assets brought to marriage), women’s social status (e.g. woman literacy and husband literacy), traditional norms (e.g. age of woman, years of marriage, and couple age difference), and community conditions (e.g. access to social programs, distance from main road and distance from parents). As a result, in our analysis of the impact of joint land rights on women empowerment, we will control for the effects of the setting and resource conditions of women. Women’s empowerment is measured in six dimensions as indicated in the figure.

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Land registration and Demographic, socio-economic, certification by joint titling of community conditions and spouses traditional factors

Women empowerment Dimensions:

Participation Participation Local Knowledge Tenure Physical in HH in organizat of their security and mobility decision community ional land rights dare to protect and making activities capacity their land autonomy rights

Figure 1: Conceptual framework Based on our research objective and the above theoretical and conceptual framework discussed, the following hypotheses are formulated to be tested in this research:-  Women with joint land title rights are more likely to have a say in a household decision making than women without joint land title rights.  Women with joint title are more likely to actively participate in community activities as compared to untitled women.  Titled women are more likely to have local organizational capacity than untitled women.  Women’s knowledge of their land rights is more likely to increase with joint titling.  Women with joint title are more likely to be tenure secure and dare to protect their land rights.  Freedom of physical mobility and autonomy is more likely higher for joint titled women compared to untitled women.  In general, joint titled women are more likely to be empowered as compared to untitled women.

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3. The case of Ethiopia

3.1. Land rights in Ethiopia Ethiopia is a Sub-Saharan developing country with an economy that is dependent on agriculture and with a large proportion of rural agrarian society1. In Ethiopia, land rights have been and continued to be one of the hottest issues in different government regimes. During the imperial regime of Haile Sellasie, land had been controlled by the elite (kings and their trusted followers) and exploitative landlord-tenant relations were pertinent. In 1975, the Derg regime came to power – initiated by the student movement with the slogan ‘land to the tiller’- and nationalized all rural land as well as set out to redistribute it to its tiller. The current government, which came to power in 1991, retained state ownership of land and natural resources but with some additional features in the land rights proclamation. These include the decentralization of some of the land policy responsibility to the regional level and the recognition of women’s right to the land through joint titling (Adnew and Abdi, 2005; Teklu, 2005).

The new government, the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (FDRE), gives usufruct rights to land lords excluding the right to mortgage or sell the land. The government’s argument for state ownership of the land is to protect the rural peasants from selling off their land to wealthy individuals, leaving them landless and without a source of livelihood. Opponents of this argument argue that ownership of land by the state prevents land market development, discourages farmers to invest on land, and that in turn leads to a reduction in land productivity and sustainable land use (Crewett et al., 2008)

Traditionally, like in many developing countries, women in rural Ethiopia do not have equal rights regarding land possession and inheritance in a family. Holden and Tefera (2008) argue that, in most societies, the aim of the land registration and certification through joint titling is to strengthen the right of women to land which is traditionally ignored and considered as property of men. The aim of the new federal and regional land proclamation of Ethiopia is to increase tenure security and strengthen women’s rights to land and to ensure more sustainable use of land resources.

For the past decade, the current government of Ethiopia has been implementing land registration and certification program. The program was started first in Tigray region in 1998 and it has been turned into a comprehensive programme undertaken at an accelerated rate in

1 Agriculture accounts 46% of the country’s GDP and 80% of total employment (World Bank, 2011). 10

other major regions since 2003 (Rahmato, 2009). These regions include the Amhara (our study area), Oromia, Southern Nations and Nationalities and peoples (SNNP), and Tigray regions. The first three regions implemented joint titling by registering and certifying land rights in the names of both the husband and the wife. This land certificate includes both husband and wife pictures on the deed. In contrast, in Tigray region, land registration and certification was done in the name of the household head (the husband for married households). The land registration and certification program in Ethiopia has been recognized as the largest delivery of non-freehold rights with least cost in a short time period in Sub- Saharan Africa (Deininger et al., 2008).

The program is also implemented by changing the previous land laws and regulations and adopting new federal land proclamations which recognize women land rights through joint titling. For example, the federal land proclamation, Proclamation No. 89/1997 part one, article 2(3) gives every Ethiopian the right to access land including the landless and poor people. The federal land proclamation, which has been effected in the year 2005, gives women equal land right with men by stating clearly that jointly held land shall be prepared in the name of all the joint holders (e.g. husband and wife) and land use rights can be transferred to family members through inheritance.

3.2. Tenure system in Amhara region (past and present) It is important to review the main tenure systems that exist predominantly in the region in order to better understand the position of women with regard to access to land.

During the imperial regime, the Amhara region had a complex land tenure system. The major form of ownership was a type of communal system known as ‘Rist’. In this system, all descendants (both male and female) of an individual founder were entitled to a share of family land. Rist was hereditary and individuals had usufructuary rights. Family members could not sell their share outside the family, mortgage it, or bequeath their share as a gift as the land belong not to the individual but to the descendant group. Other major forms of tenure system were Gult, Samon, Mengist, Maderia land. Gult was an ownership right acquired from the monarch or provincial rulers who were empowered to make land grants. Samon land was land granted from the government to the Ethiopian Orthodox church permanently. Mengist and Maderia land was land registered as government property and land granted for life mainly to government officials, war veterans, and other patriots as a salary or pension, respectively.

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The land reform proclamation of the Derg regime provides the right to have land by any head of a household (irrespective of sex) and willing to cultivate. In practice, the land was given to the husband (when present) because he was by law the head of the household. This further worsened women’s right to land in the Amhara region as secondary rights, which derived through their membership of the households and attained primarily through marriage (Teklu, 2005).

During the current regime, a series of land redistributions was undertaken between 1991 and 1996. There was no clear guideline on how this redistribution was undertaken, although it was perceived by the community to make the land size holdings system fair and to allocate land to the landless. Though age and sex were the main criteria of land allocation where any individual women above 18 years old or man above 24 years old was entitled to an allocation, favoritism and social and economic status were important in influencing the land redistribution (Teklu, 2005). This puts the poor, particularly women, in a victim situation when they try to access land.

In the Amhara region, land degradation is a major problem of the agricultural sector. Frequently mentioned reasons include natural factors, long-term history of settlement, prevailing farming methods, increasing population pressure and tenure insecurity. Population pressure makes people cultivate even steep slopes, causing erosion and resource degradation. For these reasons, the regional government placed the land issue at the top of its agenda, together with the gender difference in land rights, and developed a series of rules and regulations (Teklu, 2005).

The Amhara regional government’s Land Use and Administration Proclamation No. 46/96, drafted in 2000, is one of the new proclamations. The rights of possession as well as the right to use, rent, and inherit were defined in the proclamation. In the new policy, women are given joint land rights together with the spouse, an equal share of land upon divorce and inheritance, and right to transfer land through inheritance (Adnew and Abdi, 2005; Teklu, 2005). However, traditionally, the land tenure system in this region can be characterized by patrilineal inheritance and virilocal residence, whereby young girls move to the home of their new husband and mostly inherit no land from their parents after they got married. As noted before, a woman in the Amhara region is expected to move to her husband’s home, which gives her only access to marital land (Teklu, 2005).

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Furthermore, women traditionally have a low position in society. They are considered as incapable for leadership and to participate in activities outside home work, except helping her husband in the field like by weeding and harvesting. An indication of this is the traditional saying that “A women’s place is in the kitchen”. These traditional practices, together with the ignorance of women’s land rights in policy until recently, affect their productivity, their intra- household bargaining power and their active participation in the community. The effect of ensuring tenure security, particularly on women empowerment and the nationwide investment as well as on economic growth of the country, is expected to be high as women account 47% of the labor force in Ethiopia (World Bank, 2011).

3.3. The land registration process In Amhara region, after the Land Use and Administration Proclamation in 2000, land under private cultivation is registered with its actual size and identification of the individual who has been cultivating it since the 1991-1996 land redistribution. Both modern (in a two pilot project districts –Gozamen in East Gojam zone and Dessie Zuria in South Wollo zone) and traditional land registration and certification approaches were used in Amhara region. In the pilot project program (supported by Swedish Sida) modern techniques, such as GPS-GIS techniques were used. However, in the traditional approach, traditional instruments including rope and stones were used for land measurement, demarcation and registration. The Regional Land Administration Authority is responsible for both Sida supported pilot and traditional approach of land registration and certification (Adenew and Abdi, 2005). In our study area, the traditional approach is used for land registration and certification.

Community representatives at the Goat level2 are vested the responsibility of the land registration. There was also a committee which established at the kebele level called Land Administration Committee (LAC). Each community at the Goat level elected seven members freely, representing them. The chair person and secretary of this committee represented them at the kebele level committee. Before the land registration, these committees at kebele and Goat level were trained as land registrar. Public information meetings were also held with the community before the start of the land registration process, to create awareness on land registration. Boundaries between private holdings of ploughed land and communal property, such as grazing land are set at the 1997 benchmark.

2 Ethiopian government administration level; Federal government->regional government->Zone->Woreda (district)->Kebele (lowest administrative unit)->Goat/Mender (village) 13

During the registration time, boundaries are visited by the committee in the presence of neighbors as witnesses. This information, plus the approximate location (names of neighbors) is filled with the name of the husband and the wife in a form. This information will be listed on a certificate with an official stamp, and names of both spouses (Adenew and Abdi, 2005). The land certificate includes the following information: the size, land use type and cover, level of fertility and borders, and obligations and rights of the holder (Holden et al., 2011). The land holder who has complaints regarding the land measurement and delineation can submit a petition to the concerned body, explaining his reasons within a given time frame. Finally, the kebele committee certifies the registration carried out by the Goat committee and settles boundary disputes including those beyond the Goat level committee. The woreda Land Use Administration Desk (LUAD) established under the Natural Resource and Land Use Administration Bureau issues each landholder with land certificate.

3.4. Study area description This study was conducted in three woredas, which are Wemberma, Bure and Jabi Tehnan located in West Gojam Zone, Amhara regional state of Ethiopia (see the map in figure 2). The Amhara region is the second after Oromia with respect to geographical area and number of population. The total estimated area of the region is 154,781km2 with a total population of 17,221,976 of whom 8, 641,580 are men and 8,580,396 are women3. The region is divided into 12 zones and 136 woredas. The land topography of the region ranges from 600 meters to 4620 meters above sea level. West Gojam Zone is one of the fertile and productive zones of Amhara region, comprising of 14 woredas including the study woredas. Its average elevation is 2138 meters. While Bahir Dar is regional capital, Finote Selam is zonal capital. The largest ethnic group of West Gojam Zone is Amhara and Amharic is the language they speak. Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity is the largest religion practiced. The sample households in the study woredas are also all Amhara ethnic group and Orthodox followers.

Wemberma, Bure and Jabi Tehnan are parts of West Gojam Zone. The Bure Woreda, located between the other two woredas, borders them. Their respective administrative towns are Shendi, Bure, and Finote Selam. The town and separate woreda of Finote Selam is surrounded by Jabi Tehnan. On average, about 12% of the total population of the respective woredas are urban inhabitants.

3 Figures in this sub-section are based on Census conducted by Central Statistical Agency of Ethiopia (CSA) in 2007 14

Figure 2: Study woredas map Note: Number 128 is Womberma woreda, 23 is Bure woreda and 70 is Jabi Tehnan woreda Source: CSA, 2007

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4. Data and empirical strategy Data used and discussion of empirical strategy that were followed in this study are presented below. 4.1. Data 4.1.1. Survey description a. Survey Data collection was carried out in the three woredas of Amhara region. From the three woredas, kebeles are selected purposively based on their land registration and certification status. Accordingly, the following kebeles are selected. From Womberma Woreda, kebeles such as Dened, Yergen, koki, Kentefen, and Wazengez are selected. Most households in these kebeles have got land title. From Bure Woreda, kebeles such as Alefa Basie, Fatan Santom, Gedam Lijamor, and Gulim Denj are selected. Except in the first one, most households in the other three kebeles have not got land title. Similarly, from Jabi Tehnan Woreda, kebeles such as Menkusa Abadegoma, Guay Wubishet, and Goref Kwencha are selected. Almost all households in these kebeles have not got land title. One hundred fourteen households from Womberma woreda (7 untitled and 107 joint titled), 136 from Bure woreda (102 joint titled and 34 untitled), and 75 from Jabi Tehnan woreda (all untitled) are selected for an interview from the three woredas purposely based on their land title status. In total, 325 households are selected for this study - 184 untitled households in all the three woredas and 141 joint titled households from the two woredas (see table 1). Both husband and wife are interviewed in each household.

Table 1: Households sample size by woreda

Woreda Untitled Joint titled Sub-total Womberma 7 107 114 Bure 102 34 136 Jabi Tehnan 75 0 75 Total 184 141 325

This survey was conducted in November and December 2012. Ten enumerators and two supervisors were hired for this survey and given a two full-day training program on the survey instruments, prepared before going to the field work. The enumerators were paired to form five pairs so that each pair would ask one household (wife and husband) in one interview.

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The survey instruments prepared were two separate close-ended and coded structural questionnaires for wife and husband, as well as a public good game instruction manual and exit- questionnaire4. The survey questionnaires include modules on household characteristics and general information; marriage history, asset brought to marriage, and bridal price; household possession and resource including household expenditures and income as well as women’s control over asset and resources; and modules on the empowerment indicators chosen in this study. They were also translated into the local language Amharic. There were differences between women’s and men’s questionnaires module parts. Among those, the men’s questionnaire included more modules, such as on agricultural technologies use of the household, marketing of agricultural produce and social capital. These modules and some modules of the women’s questionnaire were intended for other objectives (since this survey was part of a large PhD project survey).

One day before undertaking the survey in the selected kebeles, announcements were made to the kebele officials or to development agents (DAs) about the survey and our objectives. The next day, we traveled to the kebele centre where farmers were waiting organized by DAs to conduct the interview. We then select households for the interview. Wife and husband were first asked and played the public good game separately and then, they were joined together to play the game jointly as well as to cross-check their answers on the common part questions, particularly on household expenditures and incomes. The survey including the game took on average one and half hours per household. Several informal discussions were also undertaken with Natural Resource and Land Use Administration Officers at kebele level to get background information.

b. Summary statistics

Summary statistics for the explanatory variables (see appendix B) used in this study and mean comparison of women empowerment indicators between joint titled and untitled women are presented below.

I. Summary statistics for explanatory variables Table 2 below shows that the average age of women interviewed for our study is 36 years old with the minimum year being 18 and maximum 57. The average number of years since the couple married is 20 years with maximum years of marriage of 50 years. Also, on average, wives are 8 years younger than husbands which indicate the early marriage practice of girls in

4 Exit-questions are observational questions filled after the game is over 17

the area. From the sample women in our study area, around 74% of the women are illiterate. Fourteen percent of the women got adult literacy education, 8% got some primary education and 4% got some secondary education (figures not reported). Compared to joint titled women, untitled women are less educated based on their percentage share in their respective group (see table 3 below). Among 184 untitled women, around 81% are illiterate. For joint titled women, this number is 65%. Men reported less illiteracy (23%) as compared to women. The education level of women depict us the common feature of illiteracy by women in the rural part of Ethiopia. On average, the household interviewed has one daughter or son whose age is above 15 years old.

Women also reported almost non-existence of social programs in the area, as measured by the presence of any NGO in the areas. Only 5% of the women reported that there exists an NGO in their areas. This might be due to misunderstanding of the question or less awareness of what an NGO means by the respondents. From the table, we can also see that women brought less land and livestock (in TLU) to their current marriage. The respective figures are 0.56 hectares of land and 0.46 TLU of livestock. A woman also has to travel long distance to go to her parents and nearby main road. Distance is measured by the number of minutes it takes her to travel on foot. On average, it takes around 210 minutes to visit her parents, and to go to the nearest main road takes 45 minutes. From the sample women, 84% have a written marriage contract with their current husband. Also, only 19% of them knew their husbands before they got married which depicts the traditional practice of arranged marriage of girls by their parents in the area.

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Table 2: Summary statistics of explanatory variables Variables Description of variables Observations Mean Std. Min Max Dev. Age of woman Age of the woman 325 36.08 8.88 18 57 Years of The number of years since the 324 19.65 9.73 1 50 marriage spouses married Couple The difference between age of wife 325 -8.06 6.47 -30 14 difference and husband Woman Dummy variable for educational 325 .26 .44 0 1 literacy status of woman (1=can read and write & 0=illiterate) Husband Dummy variable that takes 1 if 325 .766 .424 0 1 literacy husband can read and write, otherwise 0 Children above Dummy for presence of child (son 325 .615 .487 0 1 15 years old or daughter) above 15 years (takes 1 if there is any, otherwise 0) Access to Dummy for the existence of social 325 .05 .21 0 1 social program (1=if exist, otherwise 0) programs Land size Total hectares of land (either 325 .56 1.32 0 12 brought to inherited or got as gift) brought to marriagea current marriage by the woman Livestock Total livestock measured in tropical 325 .46 .86 0 9.1 brought to livestock unit (TLU) brought to marriagea current marriage by the woman Distance from The number of minutes that it takes 325 210.42 269.09 0 1440 parents the woman to go to her parents by foot Distance from The number of minutes that it takes 325 44.66 42.43 0 180 main road the woman to go to a close by main road by foot Marriage Type of marriage contract the 325 .8431 .3643 0 1 contractb woman have with her current husband (1=written, 0=verbal or no contract) Know Whether the woman knew her 325 .1877 .3911 0 1 husbandb husband before she got married (1=if she knew him, 0=if not) a these two variables are standardized and added together to get the variable assets brought to marriage in the program selection equation bthese two variables are among three additional variables used in the tobit regression model (they are assumed to affect women empowerment only)

Table 3 below gives us the mean differences in covariates (expected to affect program selection and program outcomes) between joint titled and untitled women. The two-sample t- test of the mean differences of woman literacy, husband literacy, access to social program, and distance from parents of titled and untitled women are significantly different vindicating us these covariates are systematical different between the two groups. This implies that there might be program selection bias in treatment and the need for controlling for this bias by appropriate econometric strategy.

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Table 3: Explanatory variables Joint titled Untitled Difference Variables women women Age of woman 36.489 35.761 .729 Years of marriage 20.650 18.886 1.764 Couple difference -8.199 -7.946 -.253 Woman literacy .355 .190 .164 *** Husband literacy .858 .696 .163*** Children above 15 years old .660 .582 .078 Access to social programs .014 .071 -.056** Assets brought to current -2.73e-08 1.51e-08 -4.24e-08 marriage5 Distance from parents 111.227 286.440 -175.213*** Distance from main road 42.156 46.571 4.415 *, **, *** show significant mean differences at 10% (P<0.10), 5% (P<0.05) and 1% (P<0.01), respectively

II. Mean comparison The six main empowerment indicators that we are interested in are: women’s participation in household decision making, women’s participation in community activities, local organizational capacity, women’s knowledge of their land rights, ‘tenure security and dare to protect their land rights’, and ‘freedom of physical mobility and autonomy’. Accordingly, we chose 54 questions related to these indicators from a set of questions asked (see table A1 in the appendix). Most of these questions are binary response questions with ‘yes’ and ‘no’ answer options, where ‘yes’ responses reflect relative empowerment. Answers are coded 1 and 0 and 1 means empowered and 0 means not empowered. Those questions which have more than two response options are recoded to 0 and 1 to facilitate the construction of an index. Before we discuss mean comparisons of the indicators of women empowerment for joint titled and untitled women, we present discussions on the choice of the indicators and questions included under each key element. The discussions are outlined according to the four key elements of empowerment that underlie any institutional reform. See appendix A for a detailed lists of women empowerment indicators and categories of empowerment chosen under each indicator.

5 Asset brought to marriage is constructed from three different variables. These are land size inherited or got as a gift from parents or relatives after marriage, land size brought to marriage, and livestock brought to marriage. First, the two variables of land brought to marriage are added to get total land size brought to marriage and then TLU for livestock are computed using the following conversion factor: cattle = 0.70, sheep and goats = 0.10, donkey = 0.50 and chicken = 0.01- Source: Jahnke et al. (1988). In order to able to add land size and livestock (TLU) brought to marriage (the two variables have different units of measurement), they are standardized for both joint titled and untitled women separately as the two groups are expected to have different distributions of the two variables. Finally, the standardized values of the two variables are summed for each individual to get asset brought to marriage. 20

To measure inclusion and participation, we used two indicators, which are participation in household decision making and participation in community activities. We used all 18 questions asked under the indicator participation in household decision making to construct its index. These questions include questions that measure women’s participation in land related or unrelated household decision-making. The first nine questions are on land related household decisions which include those decisions from crop choice decisions to whether to use agricultural technology (See the table in appendix A). On the other hand, the remaining questions are on household decisions unrelated to land and include those decisions from whether to save from household income to labor supplies decisions. All questions asked under this indicator have ‘yes’ or ‘no’ response options.

For the participation in community activities indicator, seven questions are chosen to construct the index. These includes questions on frequency of participation in village meeting, participation in voting, in public information meeting, in soil and water conservation, in construction of public center, in road maintaining, and participation in school, mosque or church building. All questions except the first and second have response options of ‘yes’ or ‘no’. On the other hand, questions on participation in village meeting and participation in voting have four response options: 1) always, 2) sometimes, 3) rarely, and 4) never. Response option 2 is recoded to 1 and response options 3 and 4 are recoded to 0, respectively. Rather than question concerned merely with women’s participation in community meeting (with ‘yes’ or ‘no’ responses), question measuring the frequency of participation in meeting is used in the index since the latter shows the degree of women empowerment.

We used women’s membership in women associations, in Iqqub (ROSCA) and in village development committee to measure their local organizational capacity. Though the first and third categories might only measure their membership in local organization, women’s membership in Iqqub can measure their capacity to organize themselves in groups for mutual beneficial activities since it is not originated and implemented by third party, as it is mostly in the former case, but rather by their own agency. Questions on the following items were excluded from the index construction of local organization capacity indicator since almost all interviewed households’ gave the same answer (the answer for all individuals is ‘no’). These include questions on membership in Iddir (funeral group), school committee or parent-teacher associations, political party or movement, village NGO or civic group, and health and sport group. All questions asked under this indicator have ‘yes’ or ‘no’ response options.

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To measure access to knowledge, we used women’s knowledge of their land rights and certain land related rules. We used 17 questions to construct the index for this indicator, ranging from whether the women know that everyone above 18 and whose livelihood is in agriculture has land access right to the rule which says land can be expropriated by the government with compensation. Also, all questions asked under this indicator have ‘yes’ or ‘no’ responses.

A close measure for transparency and accountability is the indicator women’s tenure security and dare to protect their land rights. It includes questions on, such as women’s confidence in the legal system, women’s tenure security feeling, whether they dare to protect their land rights, whether they expect equal land share upon divorce, and expect equal land share upon death of their husbands. The question whether women have confidence on the legal system as it gives and protects their land might be one example of a good measure for transparency and accountability. The first three questions have response options ‘yes’ or ‘no’. However, the last two sub-questions have six response options: 1) all, 2) more than half, 3) half, 4) less than half, 5) nothing and 6) do not know. Response options 2 and 3 are recoded to 1 and response options 4, 5 and 6 are recoded to 0, respectively. Here, rather than questions that measure mere women’s expectation of land share when they divorce or their husband die and which have answer options ‘yes’ or ‘no’, questions which measure how much of the land they expect to get are used in the index construction since the later show the degree of women empowerment.

We used one extra dimension of women empowerment which is physical mobility and autonomy. This indicator index is constructed using responses of questions on; whether the woman can go to market alone, can decide by her own to travel and visit family and friends, can take her children to health clinic alone, and whether she need permission from her husband to attend meetings. The second and third questions have ‘yes’ or ‘no’ response options. On the other hand, the question on whether she can go to the market alone has three response options: 1) yes alone, 2) yes if someone accompanies and 3) not at all. Response options 2 and 3 are recoded to 0. Also, the question on whether she needs permission from her husband to attend meetings has three response options: 1) yes, 0) no, and 2) do not know. Response options 1 and 2 are recoded to 0 and 0 recoded to 1. At last, the overall women empowerment indicator used is a combination of all the six indicators together and as a result, we used all the 54 categories chosen to construct its index.

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Table A1 in the appendix simply averages the responses of all individuals on all 54 questions chosen. As shown in the table, joint titled women are significantly more empowered than untitled women in most categories. For example, out of 141 joint titled women, 92% have participated in land investment and management decisions like tree planting or soil conservation. In contrast, out of 184 untitled women, 84% of them have participated and influenced such decisions. The difference of 8.5% is significant at the 5% significance level.

In table 4 below, mean values of each indicator are calculated. First, we add the responses of all individuals across rows on the questions under each indicator. Then, we divided these sums for each individual by the number of questions under each indicator. Finally, these mean values of all individuals on each indicator are added and divided by the number of observations for both joint titled and untitled women groups separately. The mean differences of these indicators between the two groups of women are given in the table, and also included in table A1 in the appendix. As an illustration, in table 4, joint titled women participate actively in overall household decisions in contrast to untitled women. Ninety two percent of titled women compared to 86% of untitled women participate actively in household decisions. Their difference in participation, which is 6%, is significant at 5% significance level (see table A1 in the appendix for detail).

In general, the mean differences for all remaining women empowerment indicators are significant at 1% significance level. In addition, the mean difference of the overall women empowerment indicator indicates that joint titled women are significantly empowered in 43 categories out of 54 categories in contrast to untitled women. Eighty two percent of titled women reported they are empowered in contrast to 69% of untitled women. Their difference, which is 13%, is significant at 1% significance level. The result from comparing the women empowerment index constructed from game data (see the next section for details on the index construction method) is consistent with the above result and the difference 0.28 between the two groups of women is also significant at 1% significance level. The tentative conclusion from the simple mean comparison of empowerment indicators is that joint titling has empowered women, in access to information, inclusion and participation, local organizational capacity, tenure security, and freedom of mobility and autonomy in West-Gojam, Amhara region, Ethiopia.

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Table 4: Dependent Variables Variables Joint titled Untitled Difference women women Percent Percent Percent Overall participation in HH decisions .9196 .8584 .0612 ** Participation in community activities .6429 .4570 .1858 *** Local organizational capacity .3830 .1993 .1837*** Women’s knowledge of their land rights .8990 .7132 .1858 *** Tenure security and dare to protect their .9560 .8804 .0756*** land rights Physical mobility and autonomy .5585 .4647 .0938 *** Overall women empowerment index .8230 .6951 .1278 *** Women empowerment indexa .6090 .3278 .2812*** Observations 141 184 *,**, ***show significant mean differences at 10% (P<0.10), 5% (P<0.05) and 1% (P<0.01), respectively a The difference for this indicator are only calculated based on data for 245 observations since the remaining are set to missing due to the index construction method used.

4.1.2. Public Goods Game The game conducted in this research is the standard linear public goods game (Ledyard, 1995). The players are allowed to contribute to a public good by giving them an endowment of tokens that they can keep or put in a public account benefiting everyone in the group. The game was conducted three times – with the wife and husband separately, and with the wife and husband jointly. Before conducting the game, the enumerators (here experimenters) practiced the game between themselves. Three envelopes were prepared for each pair of enumerators to collect the contribution made to the common pool – one marked female private contribution, one marked male private contribution, and the other marked joint contribution. Three other envelops were also prepared to collect the total contributions of the respective groups in each round of interviews where mostly four households were played the game per each round. When less than four or more than four households played the game per round, the remaining households from four were filled from or considered with (respectively) the previous households who played the game. This was done in order to keep the same structure of payoff during division of the contributions to the common pool after the survey is over for that particular day.

The procedures of the game were as follows. First, the objectives, procedures of the game and anonymity of members in the groups were explained to the players. Then, the wife and husband were given 15 Ethiopian Birr (ETB) (=0.833 USD)6 each. When the individual game was played, it was made sure that the wife and the husband were in far distance from each

6 1USD was around 18Birr at that time 24

other so that there is no influence of spouse. Next, she/he was asked to keep any amount from 0-15 for herself/himself and to contribute any amount he/she likes for the common pool of their respective groups. Prior announcement was made about the amount they contribute to the common pool will be doubled and kept for later equal division between all group members irrespective of individual contributions. Afterwards, the wife and husband were joined together and given 15Birr together. And then, they were asked to negotiate between themselves and to contribute any amount between 0-15 and keep the rest for themselves to divide equally between each other later on. Then individual private and joint contributions to the common pool were doubled and collected for the respective groups.

During the joint game, spouses were invited to be loud while negotiating, so that observational questions regarding the negotiations can be filled out at the end of the game. We also recorded the time it took them to reach an agreement. Observational questions of the public good game questionnaire include questions, such as who talked much in the process of negotiations, whether there was a threat during negotiation from any of the spouses, who made the threat, who was more cooperative during negotiation, number of proposals made and who made more proposals. At the end of the survey, the total amount of cash contributed was divided between the respective group members and both wife and husband received their share, one part from the individual private contribution and one from the joint contribution7. On average, each individual was paid 50 ETB. After individuals participated in the game, they were informed not to communicate with other participants about the game and money they got, to avoid bias among subsequent participants. To minimize such bias, in most kebeles, the survey was conducted in one day only8.

Joint decisions in each game relative to the individual decisions are used to construct a game specific measure of relative bargaining power. We assumed joint decisions to be a function of individual preferences revealed in the individual games, relative bargaining power, and the joint process. We report women bargaining power as the difference between the joint and the male decision, relative to the difference between the female and the male decision. We also

7 If group contribution is C, then the amount an individual retain for himself, herself or themselves (in the joint game) is 15-C. After the total value of contribution is doubled, the individual payoff ( ) in individual and joint game is given as follows and

, respectively.

8 However, in three kebeles (Dend, Yergin, and Fatam Santom), the survey was conducted in two days. 25

expect some joint decisions to lie outside the interval of individual decisions. This is possible since we have limited choice sets. Those households whose joint decisions lie outside the interval of the individual decisions are reported as full bargaining power to the spouse which lies closest to the joint decision. Following Wiig et al. (2011), women bargaining power (women empowerment index) is calculated using the following formula.

Hence, a female bargaining power reported as 0.75 implies a joint decision inside the interval between the two individual decisions but non-equal to individual decisions and close to women’s individual decision. On the other hand, a value of 1 implies full bargaining power of the women, and a value of 0 implies full bargaining power of the man. Households in which the two individual decisions are exactly equal are set to missing since they do not give any information about the relative bargaining power.

Table 5 below shows summary statistics of the game. On average, women contributed a slightly lower amount than men, or 4.2 versus 4.3 ETB, respectively. However, the difference between them is not significant at conventional significance levels9. This small difference might reflect lower expectations of average contributions by other group members (4.9 versus 5.610 ETB, respectively). The mean difference of the average expected contribution by other group members between wife and husband is significant at 5% significance level. Also, on average, both spouses jointly contributed 4.2 birr of the 15 birr token given to them to the common pool and kept the rest for them to divide between themselves.

From table 5, it can also be seen that, on average, the game lasts 2 minutes with minimum 0.5 and maximum 5 minutes. During the game, men talk more than women. There were a few cases where threat was observed (9%, or in 32 household cases out of 324). Also, men cooperated more than women, which is 52% of the cases as compared to women. This is in line with the claim that men behave differently when alone and when observed by their wives (Ashraf, 2009). A range of proposals from one to five are made and, on average, women made less of these proposals (in 36% of the cases) than men. In 45% of the cases, the individual choice of the woman is higher than the individual choice of the man as the figure for trend indicates. The average women empowerment index is 0.45.

9 P-value for mean comparison of paired data is 0.8697 10 P-value for mean comparison of paired data is 0.0154 26

Table 5: Summary statistics of game Variables Description of variables Observations Mean Standard Minimum Maximum deviation Private kept Amount kept by the woman 325 10.8246 2.8279 0 15 woman from the 15 birr token Private allocated Amount contributed by the 325 4.1785 2.8282 0 15 woman woman to the common pull in birr Expected Wife’s expectation on the 325 4.9308 2.9217 0 15 average average contribution of other contribution group members (wife) Private kept man Amount kept by the man 325 10.746 2.8298 0 15 from the 15 birr token Private allocated Amount contributed by the 325 4.3138 2.8241 0 15 man man to the common pull in birr Expected Husband’s expectation on the 325 5.5538 3.8331 0 15 average average contribution of other contribution group members (husband) Joint kept Amount kept jointly from the 325 10.7554 2.5548 0 15 15 birr token Joint allocated Amount contributed jointly to 325 4.2446 2.5548 0 15 the common pull in birr Time elapsed Time that it took spouses to 324 1.9522 1.0939 0.5 5 arrive at a joint decision Who talked Who talked much in the 324 .28704 .4531 0 1 much process of the bargain to make the joint decision? 1=The wife, 0=The husband Threat present Was there a threat to force the 324 .0957 .2946 0 1 other spouse to accept one’s decision? 1=Yes, 0=No Who threaten If Yes, who was applying the 32 .4375 .5040 0 1 threat? 1=The wife, 0=The husband Who cooperated Who was more cooperative in 324 .4784 .5003 0 1 more the process of the negotiation to reach the same decision? 1=The wife, 0=The husband No. proposal Number of proposals made by 324 1.4691 .6361 1 5 both spouses to arrive at the joint decision Who made more Who did make more such 324 .3580 .4802 0 1 proposal proposals during their negotiation? 1=The wife, 0=The husband Trend A control for the effect of the 245 .4898 .5009 0 1 joint process. 1 if the individual choice of the woman is higher than the individual choice of the man, otherwise 0. Women A continuous variable with a 245 .4518 .4638 0 1 empowerment range between 0-1 that index measures women bargaining power.

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4.2. Methodology The process of becoming a joint titled household is exogenous due to top-down enforcement of joint titling. Accordingly, cross-sectional survey is sufficient for the purpose of studying the potential effects of joint tilting on women empowerment. Because the land titling program was implemented a decade ago, it is expected that any potential gender equalizing effect will be realized. In this study, we compare households in communities where joint titling has been implemented with households in communities where no titling has occurred.

To ensure comparability of titled and untitled households for the validity of our empirical strategy, we took two important actions in our data collection efforts. First, the sample area was designed to ensure sufficient similarity in economic opportunities and livelihood options of the households. To do so, we consulted the notion of development domains, defined as geographic locations sharing broadly similar rural development constraints and opportunities (Bernard et al., 2008), in picking the districts. The classification is based on agricultural potential, access to markets and population density that best reflect livelihood strategies among smallholders. The three districts are categorized in the same development domain, characterized as comprising high population density and moisture reliant highlands with productivity growth and market improvement as the priority livelihood strategies (Chamberlin et al., 2006). Second, we sampled the untitled Kebeles from a relatively large set of untitled Kebeles largely for exogenous reasons, such as human resource and certificate constraints of the districts, boarder conflicts between Kebeles, conflicts on grazing lands, and migration related conflicts11. Accordingly, there is no a priori reason to believe that the distribution of household level unobservables differ systematically between titled and untitled households that share similar observable characteristics.

We use propensity score matching approach to estimate the average treatment effect of joint titling on women empowerment. In addition, a tobit regression is estimated using the data of the public good game experiment. The use of tobit regression for the experiment data in addition to its use in PSM estimation is due to censoring of the index constructed. Also, we use more explanatory variables in the tobit model as a control (such as whether the woman has a marital contract and whether the woman knew her husband before she married him) that are assumed to only affect women bargaining power but not joint titling probability. A detailed account of each method (PSM and tobit regression) is given below.

11 We learnt from the “natural resources and land use administration” officials of the districts that the conflicts typical involve grazing land claims and they have not had any effect on farming land. 28

4.2.1. Propensity score matching method Simply comparing women who have joint land rights with those who do not have joint land rights, using women empowerment indicators, may result in selection bias since the land registration and certification program in Ethiopia might not be randomly assigned. To account for potential targeted program placement or selection into participation, we used Propensity Score Matching (Heckman et al, 1997). When treatment assignment or participation is not random but determined by observables, PSM allows comparing treated individuals to untreated individuals by controlling for observables such as demographic, socio-economic conditions of women, community characteristics, culture and traditional norms. We thus match women that share the same demographic, socio-economic, community characteristics and cultural settings or women with the same likelihood (propensity score) to get joint titling with the exception that some are joint titled or some not, to attribute difference in women empowerment to joint titling.

a. Propensity score matching

Our PSM model main pillars are individuals (women), treatment (land certification status) and potential outcomes (women empowerment). In our case, the treatment indicator land certification is binary and equals 1 if individual receives land certificate and 0 otherwise. Then, the women empowerment outcome of receiving joint land certification together with the spouse is defined as for each individual where and N denotes the total population in this case women in the study areas. The treatment effect for an individual i can be written as

The problem in this case is to find a counterfactual group - what would have happened to those women who received joint land rights certificate if they did not receive it - since observations on women for two situations cannot be made at one point in time. As a result, estimating empowerment effect on individual woman is not possible and as a solution, we estimated the population average treatment effect. The most common average effect estimation of a program used in literatures is average treatment effect on the treated (ATT) (Caliendo and Kopeinig, 2008) which is defined as,

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Where ATT is the average treatment effect on the treated and is the expected outcome for those women who received joint land certificates. On the other hand, is the counterfactual for the treated, which estimates what the outcome would be if those women who received a joint land rights certificates did not receive it. Since the counterfactual cannot be observed, we estimated it using the outcome of those women who did not receive joint land certificates but share similar observable characteristics with the treated women (except having joint land certificate).

An important assumption in estimating the treatment effect is the Conditional Independence Assumption (CIA) (Lechner, 1999). CIA is defined as

where denotes conditional independence. It means that all observable covariates , which can affect women empowerment and joint land certification, are controlled for and also unobserved factors, they do not affect land certification and women empowerment. In our case, CIA implies that systematic differences in women empowerment between treated and untreated women with the same values of observables are attributed to joint land rights titling. In other words, it means that the Ethiopian Land Registration and Certification program is exogenous in its implementation. This assumption seems realistic since the land titling program in Ethiopia is implemented in mass and in one go method, in which after one household/district is registered, it continues to the others.

However, conditioning on all relevant observables is limited, particularly in the case of high dimensionality vector (Caliendo and Kopeinig, 2008). To deal with the dimensionality problem, we first estimated the propensity score , which means the probability for an individual woman to receive joint land certificate given her observed covariates . Then we use the estimated propensity score for conditioning and remove all biases due to observables (Imbens, 2004). Rosenbaum and Rubin (1983) showed that if potential outcomes are independent of treatment conditional on covariates , they are also independent of treatment conditional on a balancing score in our case . Unconfoundedness assumption given the propensity score is given as

Another important assumption is that sizable common support or overlap in propensity scores across the treated and non-treated women samples: . It ensures that

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women with the same values have positive probability of being both treated and non-treated (Heckman et al, 1999).

Given that CIA and common support assumptions hold, the PSM estimator for the average treatment effect on the treated can be specified as the mean difference in over the common support, weighting the comparison units (untitled women) by the propensity score distribution of participants (joint titled women). A typical cross-section estimator is given as:

Land certification status as the dependent variable and women’s demographic situation, community conditions, women’s economic situation, women’s social status, and traditional norms as a control are used to estimate the propensity score for each household using logit model. The estimated propensity scores are used to match treatment and control groups using kernel matching methods. Weights are inversely proportional to the distance between the propensity scores of treated and control observations (Becker and Ichino, 2002). Matching is done on the region of common support12. The distribution of the propensity score and the region of common support are shown in figure 3 below. The figure shows presence of bias in the distribution of the propensity score between joint titled and untitled women. This implies the significance of proper matching and the imposition of the common support condition to avoid bad matches.

0 .2 .4 .6 .8 Propensity Score

Untreated Treated: On support Treated: Off support

Figure 3: Histogram of propensity score distribution

Then, the average treatment effects on the treated (ATT) of joint land titling based on indicators of women empowerment are determined. ATT is computed by taking the average

12 Following the suggestion of Leuven and Sianesi (2003), the matching procedure is performed in the region of common support by dropping observations from the joint titled women whose p-scores are higher than the maximum or less than the minimum p-score of untitled women. 31

of the sum of individual matched pair differences in the outcome variable. Since we have six indicators for women empowerment, we estimate six ATT based on all the women empowerment indicators. In addition, we estimate two overall ATT, based on indices constructed from all the above women empowerment dimensions and from game data.

b. Matching quality assessment and sensitivity analysis

For PSM method to be effective, matching should balance observable explanatory variables across joint titled and untitled women. In order to check for this, a matching quality assessment using a balancing test is performed after the match. There are different approaches for balancing test and among these are standardized bias, two-sample t-test, joint significance test (Psuedo-R2), likelihood-ratio test13. Rosenbaum and Rubin (1985) suggest using standardized bias (SB) as one suitable indicator to assess the distance in marginal distribution of the X variables. Most commonly, SB bias below 5% after matching is considered as sufficient. They also suggest using a two-sample t-test to check if there are significant differences in covariates means for both treatment and control groups. Though there can be differences before matching, after matching the covariates should be balanced in both groups and hence no significant differences should be found.

Moreover, it is advised to re-estimate the propensity score on the matched sample (i.e. only on participant and matched nonparticipant) and compare the pseudo-R2 before and after matching (Sianesi, 2004). After matching there should be no systematic differences in the distribution of covariates between both groups and therefore the pseudo-R2 which indicates how well the regressors X explain the joint titling participation probability should be fairly low. In addition, a likelihood ratio test on the joint significance of all regressors in the participation logit model should not be rejected before and should be rejected after matching. All these tests are primarily concerned with the extent to which the differences in the observable characteristics between joint titled women and untitled women have been eliminated.

Since “hidden bias” may still arise with the PSM if there are unobserved variables that simultaneously affect joint titling and women empowerment, there is the need to check for hidden bias after matching. Rosenbaum (2002) has suggested to use a sensitivity analysis known as bounding approach to address this problem. By comparing the Rosenbaum bounds

13 See Caliendo and Kopeinig (2008) for detail 32

on treatment effect at different level of gamma ( ), it is possible to examine the strength unmeasured influences would require in order to change inferences about the treatment effect.

4.2.2. Econometric strategy: Tobit Model The female bargaining power measure discussed before is a continuous and censored variable. It has a lower censoring at 0 and upper censoring at 1, which justifies the use of tobit regression in our analysis. We use the same data again, but now in a tobit regression model. The only difference between PSM and the regression model with regard to the data we use are, in the later case, index for women empowerment is constructed from game data and additional explanatory variables are included. The censored regression model is given by the following formula.

Where N is the number of observation, is an unobserved (“latent”) variable, is a vector of explanatory variables, is a vector of unknown coefficients, and is an error term assumed to have normal distribution with zero mean and constant variance . 0 is the lower limit and 1 is the upper limit of the dependent variable (in our case women empowerment index). See appendix B for the discussions on the explanatory variables (including the new ones).

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5. Results and discussions

In this section, the main results of the study and brief discussions are presented. In the first sub-section, results of PSM are presented and later, tobit regression results of public good game are discussed.

5.1. Propensity score matching results As discussed in the methodology section, PSM enables avoiding of program selection bias by controlling for observables, and to estimate the impact that can be attributed to the program treatment. In the first sub-section, we discuss the estimation of average treatment on the treated (ATT) and its sensitivity analysis to unobservable factors. In the later sub-section, we assess matching quality of kernel matching and do a robustness analysis of the PSM results to other matching methods.

5.1.1. ATT estimation Before proceeding to the ATT estimation results, looking at the program selection equation presented below in table 6, we observe that women literacy, husband literacy, access to social programs, and distance from parents have a significant effect on program selection. While husband education and distance from parents are highly significant at 1% significance level, women literacy and access to social programs are significant at 5% and all except access to social programs have the expected sign.

The above results show that the likelihood of joint land certification for women increases with women and husband literacy. These might be due to the fact that education increases the awareness for the importance of registering land (particularly, jointly) and enables meeting all the required legal requirements easily. It can also increase the lobbying ability of the person through increasing awareness about his/her rights and obligations for registering land even in untitled villages. These results imply that the probability of joint titling of women increases as the wife and husband are informed and intelligent.

On the other hand, access to social programs seems to impair women from access to joint titling. This result is contrary to what is commonly expected that access to social programs increases women’s outside participation thereby empowering them. Perhaps when woman receives support from a social program affecting her decision ability in household matters, causes an increase in tensions.

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Women who live far away from their parents are also less likely to get a joint land certificate. This might be due to the vulnerability of women to be deceived by her husband during the land registration process, either by registering none or less land size in joint title including her name compared to when she has access to a close by family member help or protection. The husband might also have the tendency to protect her rights when her families live nearby. The other exogenous factors of program selection are insignificant and most of them have the expected sign except years of marriage squared.

Table 6: Program selection equation HH land title status Age of woman -0.007 (.0282) Years of marriage .0548 (.0559) Years of marriage squared -.0007 (.0012) Couple difference .0386 (.0883) Interaction of age and couple difference -.0015 (0.0023) Woman literacy .6305 (.2957)** Husband literacy .8579 (.3271)*** Children above 15 yrs. .0371 (.3650) Access to social programs -1.7679 (.8418)** Assets brought to current marriage .0239 (.0843) Distance from main road -.0004 (.0030) Distance from parents -.0037 (.0008) *** Constant -1.0332 (1.1381) Pseudo-R2 0.1516 Observation 324 *, **, *** show significant coefficients at 10% (P<0.10), 5% (P<0.05) and 1% (P<0.01), respectively Values in the parenthesis are standard errors.

The results of the logit model for program selection imply the need for controlling for the significant variables to get rid of any systematic differences in covariates distribution between joint titled and untitled women. We used PSM technique to control for this selection bias and estimate the average treatment effects on the treated (ATT) by using kernel matching method after balancing for differences in covariates. By matching in the region of common support, the common support condition is imposed in estimation of ATT. Psmatch2 program (Leuven

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and Sianesi 2003) is used to estimate the ATTs. Below we take into account the findings of the PSM results one by one.

Finding 1: Joint titled women are more likely to participate in community activities than untitled women

The PSM estimation result presented in table 7 shows that joint land titling has empowered women by increasing their participation in community activities, such as in village meetings, voting, public information meetings, and soil and water conservation activities etc. On average, 63% of joint titled women are more likely to participate in community activities as compared to 48% of untitled women. This 15% difference in community activities participation score of joint titled than untitled women is significant at 1% significance level.

Finding 2: Local organizational capacity of women is more likely to increase when women are jointly titled than untitled

Joint titled women are more likely to be a member of local organizations- such as women associations and village development committee and to organize themselves in groups like in Rotating Saving and Credit Associations (ROSCA) in contrast to untitled women. On average, 38% of joint titled women are members of such organizations compared to 22% of untitled women who are registered as members. The average percentage point difference which is 16% in local organizational capacity between the two groups is significant at 1% significance level.

However, the results for participation in community activities and local organizational capacity are relatively low for both joint titled and untitled women. They are below 50%, except for community participation score for joint titled women (but still low). This suggests a need to do more work in these areas, not alone through land title provision for women but also by implementing other programs related to women that aim to increase their participation in community activities and organizational capacity.

Finding 3: Joint titled women are more informed about their land rights and related rights than untitled women

Table 7 below indicates that joint titled women are more likely to be aware of their land rights and related rights when compared to untitled women. These rights are applicable for both titled and untitled women. The difference arises from awareness created in the process of land

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registration and certification (for example, during public information meetings before land registration, and rights and duties included in the land certificate). Some of these rights include whether the woman knows that she has equal joint land certification rights, equal share upon divorce, equal share upon death of husband, as she can deny her husband to lease- out land when he does not consent her and the family, whether she knows the litigation procedures in case of compliance and so forth (see table A1 in the appendix for details). Ninety percentage points of joint titled women know these rights of them compared to 73% of untitled women. Their mean difference of 17% is significant at 1% significance level.

Finding 4: Joint titled women are more likely to feel tenure secure and dare to protect their land rights as compare to those women who did not get joint land rights.

Self-reported answers show that joint titled women are more likely to feel tenure secure, confident in the law and dare to defend their land rights. They are also more likely to expect an equal division of land upon divorce or death of husband. Their respective figures are 96% for joint titled women versus 88% for untitled women. Though the figures are close for both groups of women, their mean difference which is 8% is still significant at 1% significance level.

These results have been confirmed during the field work by most women responses and Land Use and Administration Committee (LUAC) of different kebeles. For instance, LUAC officer of one kebele in Jabi Tehnan woreda said that after land registration and certification program started and implemented in their kebele, joint titled women tend to claim their rights confidently and dare to take any legal action affordable and possible to them when their husbands try to deny their land rights. Because of this, they said, mostly men complain about women’s rights after joint titling by saying ‘women’s rights are too much compared to us’ and ‘can’t it be less?’

Finding 5: Women with joint land rights also appear to have more freedom in physical mobility and autonomy.

Measured by whether the woman can go to the market and take her child to a health clinic alone, whether she can visit family and friends, and can attend public meetings without her husband’s permission, the corresponding figure of the indicator freedom of physical mobility and autonomy shows that (on average) 56% of joint titled women can do this, compared to 49% of untitled women. The average mean difference of this indicator between the two

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groups is 7%, and significant at 5% significance level, which implies that joint titled women are modestly more likely to have freedom of physical mobility and autonomy in comparison to untitled women.

Finding 6: It was not observed that the likelihood of women’s participation in the household decisions increases with joint titling.

Despite the above important findings, joint titled women and untitled women are not significantly different with regard to participation in household decisions. Their respective figures are 92% versus 88%. This might be due to the moderate consent that husbands seek from their wives in most household decisions. Anyway, most women interviewed responded to the question whether they participate in the household decision making categories related to land or not by saying ‘indeed, we participate and influence those decisions; are we not husband and wife?’ The absence of difference in household decisions, such as on small expenditure, contraceptive use, sending children to school and so on might be expected as they are mostly tasks of women in the household labor division.

Finding 7: Generally, joint titled women are more likely to be empowered compared to untitled women.

The overall women empowerment indicator shows that, on average, 82% joint titled women and 71% of untitled women are more empowered in all dimensions of women empowerment except participation in household decision making. So, on average, joint titled women are 11 percentage points more likely empowered compared to untitled women. This difference is significant at 1% significance level. Similarly, the ATT figure 0.258 for women empowerment index obtained from game data for 244 households is significant at 1% significance level, confirming the results of the above overall women empowerment indicator.

The above results, particularly related to women’s participation in community activities, local organizational capacity and freedom of physical mobility and autonomy imply that the land titling program has empowered the treated women in these aspects which in turn can increase their voice and representation. These women empowerment effects are a direct effect in a sense that the joint land titling program by giving women the right to access resources (in this case land) enabled them to participate in the community activities individually and/or in group as well as allowed them to decide autonomously and go alone to places which were hardly possible before (meaning by their own agency). This also means a change in the traditional

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images that women have in the area (their achievement), which are ‘women are not capable to lead’ and ‘the women’s place is in the kitchen’.

Propensity score matching estimators are not consistent estimators for treatment effects if the assignment to treatment is endogenous, which means unobserved variables that affect the assignment process are also related to the outcomes (DiPrete and Gangl, 2004). The results of the Rosenbaum bounds sensitivity analysis on hidden bias, which shows the critical level of gamma ( ) at which the causal inference of significant impact of joint titling may be questionable, are also presented in table 7. For example, the value of 6.00-6.05 for overall women empowerment implies that if individuals that have the same X-vector differ in their odds of joint titling by a factor of 6.05, the positive significant effect of the joint titling on overall women empowerment may be questionable. Additionally, table 7 shows that the robustness to hidden bias varies considerably across the eight outcome variables. The results of joint titling on local organizational capacity and physical mobility and autonomy are the least robust to possible presence of hidden bias14.

14 As noted by DiPrete and Gangl (2004), the Rosenbaum bounds are the worst case scenario 39

Table 7: Average treatment effect and sensitivity analysis results (using all covariates) Matched Joint Untitled ATTa Critical Treated Control titled women value of on on women gamma b common common support support Overall .9234 .8751 .0483 2.20-2.25 127 184 participation in (.0300) HH decisions Participation in .6337 .4793 .1543 2.80-2.85 127 184 community (.0328)*** activities Local .3832 .2236 .1596 1.60-1.65 127 184 organizational (.0399)*** capacity Women’s .9018 .7328 .1690 9.80-9.85 127 184 knowledge of (.0197)*** their land rights Tenure security .9575 .8778 .0797 4.05-4.10 127 184 and dare to (.0183)*** protect their land rights Physical mobility .5610 .4903 .0707 1.40-1.45 127 184 and autonomy (.0318)** Overall women .8241 .7126 .1115 6.00-6.05 127 184 empowerment (.0169)*** index Women .5999 .3418 .2580 2.60-2.65 95 137 empowerment (.0738)*** index (from game)c

*, **, *** show significant mean differences at 10% (P<0.10), 5% (P<0.05) and 1% (P<0.01), respectively a standard errors are bootstrapped 100 times. Standard errors are given in parenthesis Note: Matching is done using epanechnikov kernel matching method with bandwidth of 0.06 on odds using the psmatch2 program of Leuven and Sianesi (2003) b computed using rbounds program of Gangl (2004). The bounds given are only for positive self-selection case (Sig+). c The difference for this indicator are only calculated based on data for 244 observations since 80 observations data are set to missing due to the index construction method used.

Since we do not have baseline data, one might suspect endogeneity of some of our explanatory variables used in the PSM estimation. For example, variables, such as woman and husband literacy as well as access to social programs might have reverse causality with women empowerment, which means already empowered women are more able to have access to education and social programs. To check whether our results will be affected by such potential endogeneity problem, we re-estimate our ATTs using the propensity score estimated by excluding the above endogenous variables as well as years of marriage squared and

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interaction of age and couple difference in the logit model of program selection. As we can see from table 8, previously significant ATTs remain significant still. Even, in this case, ATTs of physical mobility and autonomy and participation in household decision making become significant at 1% and 5% significance level, respectively. Matching quality assessment (not reported) and sensitivity analysis results are satisfied for estimations in table 8.

Table 8: Average treatment effect and sensitivity analysis results (using exogenous covariates only) Matched Joint Untitled ATTa Critical Treated Control titled women value of on on women gamma b common common support support Overall .9241 .8652 .0588 2.65-2.70 139 184 participation in (.0288)** HH decisions Participation in .6468 .4804 .1664 2.35-2.40 139 184 community (.0332)*** activities Local .3837 .2003 .1834 1.30-1.35 139 184 organizational (.0377)*** capacity Women’s .8997 .7231 .1766 10.25-10.30 139 184 knowledge of (.0221)*** their land rights Tenure security .9568 .8782 .0786 3.45-3.50 139 184 and dare to (.0179)*** protect their land rights Physical mobility .5612 .4773 .0838 1.80-1.85 139 184 and autonomy (.0304)*** Overall women .8255 .7042 .1212 5.20-5.25 139 184 empowerment (.0156)*** index Women .6111 .3561 .2549 2.70-2.75 106 137 empowerment (.0645)*** index (from game)c

*, **, *** show significant mean differences at 10% (P<0.10), 5% (P<0.05) and 1% (P<0.01), respectively a standard errors are bootstrapped 100 times. Standard errors are given in parenthesis Note: Matching is done using epanechnikov kernel matching method with bandwidth of 0.06 on odds using the psmatch2 program of Leuven and Sianesi (2003) b computed using rbounds program of Gangl (2004). The bounds given are only for positive self-selection case (Sig+). c The difference for this indicator are only calculated based on data for 244 observations since 80 observations data are set to missing due to the index construction method used.

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5.1.2. Matching quality assessment This section presents the results of matching quality assessment for kernel matching using the main methods which are frequently used in literatures.

Table 9 shows the covariate balance results using the standardized bias of mean differences between treated and control sample and two-sample t-test of these mean differences. It presents the before and after matching results. Accordingly, in all cases, it is evident that sample differences in the raw data significantly exceed those in the sample of matched cases. The standardized bias for all covariates is less than 5% which is according to the required value of less than or equal to 5% for covariate balancing. Table 9 also shows that the two- sample t-test of the mean differences between treated and control sample for all covariates after matching are insignificant. This implies that the process of matching creates a high degree of “covariate balance” between the treated and control sample that are used in the estimation procedure.

Additional matching quality assessment results for kernel method are shown in table 10 along with values for other matching methods. The mean absolute standardized bias before and after matching are indicated in the last column of table 10. The standardized mean differences before and after matching are 21.2% and 2.3%, respectively. This means a substantial bias reduction are obtained after matching ascertaining once again the balancing power of the estimation.

Furthermore, table 10 presents in the eighth and ninth row, the pseudo R2 from the propensity score estimation before and after matching for different matching methods. The pseudo R2 is very low after matching as expected. The p-values of the likelihood ratio test of the joint significance of all the regressors in the logit model of propensity score estimation before and after matching are also presented in the tenth and eleventh row of the table (see the last column of these rows for kernel matching method values). The corresponding p-values of the likelihood-ratio test show that the joint significance of regressors on the treatment status could always be rejected after matching but not before matching. All the above covariate balancing assessment results imply that there is no systematic difference in the distribution of covariates between both groups after matching.

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Table 9: PSM using kernel matching and covariate balance Variable Unmatched Mean %bias %reduction t-test p>|t| Matched |bias| Treated Control Age of woman Unmatched 36.393 35.761 7.2 0.64 0.525 Matched 36.094 36.172 -0.9 87.7 -0.07 0.944 Years of marriage Unmatched 20.65 18.886 18.2 1.62 0.106 Matched 19.819 19.564 2.6 85.6 0.21 0.833 Years of marriage Unmatched 518.45 451.46 15.6 1.39 0.165 squared Matched 482.53 477.61 1.1 92.7 0.09 0.927 Couple difference Unmatched -8.2071 -7.9457 -4.0 -0.36 0.720 Matched -8.2598 -8.5632 4.7 -16.0 0.36 0.721 Interaction of age Unmatched -297.7 -279.86 -7.0 -0.62 0.536 and couple Matched -298.44 -310.79 4.8 30.8 0.37 0.714 difference Woman literacy Unmatched .35714 .19022 38.0 3.43 0.001 Matched .29134 .28587 1.2 96.7 0.10 0.924 Husband literacy Unmatched .85714 .69565 39.4 3.45 0.001 Matched .84252 .82738 3.7 90.6 0.32 0.746 Children above 15 Unmatched .65714 .58152 15.6 1.39 0.167 yrs. Matched .62205 .62344 -0.3 98.2 -0.02 0.982 Access to social Unmatched .01429 .07065 -28.1 -2.41 0.017 program Matched .01575 .01892 -1.6 94.4 -0.19 0.847 Assets brought to Unmatched -.0009 1.5e-08 -0.1 -0.01 0.996 current marriage Matched -.08073 -.02885 -3.4 -5653.4 -0.25 0.803 Distance from Unmatched 42.386 46.571 -9.8 -0.88 0.380 main road Matched 41.976 41.012 2.3 77.0 0.19 0.850 Distance from Unmatched 112.02 286.44 -71.5 -6.09 0.000 parents Matched 121.71 118.25 1.4 98.0 0.20 0.839

Table 10 also presents robustness of ATT estimates to different matching methods. ATT estimates for overall women empowerment are only shown in the table for illustrative purpose. However, robustness to different matching method was also checked for the other women empowerment indicators. ATT estimates for all, except for the indicators participation in household decision making and physical mobility and autonomy, remain robust (results available on request). As can be seen from the sixth row of the table ATT for overall women empowerment estimates ranges between 10% and 15%. ATT estimates for kernel matching method, which is 11%, is between this range and it is also replicated and shown in the table to enable easy distinguish of the differences in ATT estimates between the different matching methods. As can be seen from the table, ATT estimates do not vary much between the different matching methods. Moreover, all the ATT estimates are significant at 1% significance level in all matching methods.

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However, we chose and stick to kernel matching method for the estimation of all ATTs related to women empowerment dimensions, since the kernel matching method performs better in reduction of standardized mean bias between treated and control groups compared to other matching methods. This can be seen from the low mean standardized bias value of 2.3%. While most matching methods also perform well in most of the covariate balancing tests as can be seen from the table, only the kernel matching method performs better in the two-sample t-test (not shown) of individual covariates balancing test.

Table 10: Robustness of results to matching methods and matching quality of kernel method Matching Method NNb NN NN + 5-NN + Radius with Kernel matching matching calliper = calliper = calliper = matching 0.01 0.01 0.01 Replacement Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Common support Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No. of treated 127 127 81 81 127 127 No. of control 184 184 184 184 184 184 Overall women .1199 .1171 .1465 .1373 .1012 .1115 *** *** *** *** *** empowerment (.0278) (.0174) (.0365) (.0321) (.0185) (.0169)*** (ATT)a Psuedo R2 before 0.154 0.154 0.154 0.154 0.154 0.154 matching Psuedo R2 after 0.040 0.016 0.048 0.041 0.013 0.002 matching before 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 matching after 0.288 0.931 0.480 0.689 0.966 1.000 matching Mean standardized 21.2 21.2 21.2 21.2 21.2 21.2 bias before matching Mean standardized 7.4 6.9 11.0 9.0 8.0 2.3 bias after matching *, **, *** show significant mean differences at 10% (P<0.10), 5% (P<0.05) and 1% (P<0.01), respectively a standard errors are bootstrapped 100 times. Standard errors are given in parenthesis. b denotes nearest neighborhood matching

5.2. Tobit regression results Based on experimental data, the tobit regression results of table 11 further support the results of the propensity score matching. Household land title status significantly affects women empowerment (women empowerment index) at 1% significance level. This justifies the casual claim we made using the quasi-experimental method (propensity score matching). As a result, our result that joint titling empowers joint titled women is robust.

The variable knew husband before marriage also has a significant (at 5% significance level) positive effect as expected on women empowerment. This implies that women who knew

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their husbands before they married are more likely empowered than those whose marriage is arranged by their parents. This might be due to the self-esteem they build from the freedom they got to choose their husband which can lead them to carefully select the husband they marry from the marriage market and to actively engage in future household decision making. It can also be a proxy for ‘not so traditional households’ where children are free to choose their partner with less influence from parents. Couple age difference is also significant at 10% significance level and has positive effect as expected. This implies that the older the woman than her husband, the more likely she will influence the household decisions.

In table 11, we can see also that most of the variables are insignificant and have the expected relationship with women empowerment indicator. However, the variables husband literacy, children above 15 years old and assets brought to marriage have unexpected sign although they are insignificant. The sample size that is used in the tobit model, after the computation of the empowerment index, is 244 out of the 325 total sample size since the individual and joint contribution of 80 spouses are the same and set to missing.

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Table 11: Tobit regression Women empowerment index

Land title status 1.5203 (.4170)*** Age of woman -.0275 (.0295) Years of marriage .0254 (.0267) Couple age difference .0448 (.0258)* Woman literacy .1529 (.4162) Husband literacy -.1264 (.4187) Children above 15 yrs. .5773 (.4563) Marriage contract .5768 (.4926) Know husband before marriage 1.2026 (.4771)** Access to social programs .3204 (.8104) Assets brought to current marriage -.0221 (.1142) Distance from main road -.0008 (.0039) Distance from parents -.0009 (.0007) Trend .1857 (.3347) Constant -.4674 (1.1440) Sigma 2.1067 (.3076) Pseudo R2 0.0826 Observations 244

*, **, *** show significant coefficients at 10% (P<0.10), 5% (P<0.05) and 1% (P<0.01), respectively Standard errors are given in parenthesis Observation summary: 112 left-censored observations at empowerment index 0, 40 uncensored observations and 92 right-censored observations at empowerment index ≥ 1

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6. Conclusions

This paper examines impacts of the land registration and certification program on women empowerment in three districts of Amhara region, Ethiopia. These districts are Womberma, Bure and Jabi Tehnan woredas. From these districts, kebeles (local administration units) where most households are joint titled or untitled are selected and a cross-sectional data from a total of 325 households are collected for this study.

In order to account for any program selection bias, this study employees a combination of propensity score matching (PSM) and tobit regression of experiment data to analyze the impacts of joint land titling program on women empowerment. Observables, such as woman and husband literacy, access to social programs and distance from parents significantly affect program participation, suggesting the presence of bias in the distribution of covariates between groups of joint titled and untitled women. As a result, it is important to account for the selection bias.

The empirical results of this study reveal a robust, positive and significant impact of joint titling of land rights for women on different dimensions of women empowerment measured by women’s participation in household decision making, participation in community activities, local organizational capacity, knowledge of their land rights, tenure security and dare to protect their land rights, freedom of physical mobility and autonomy and on a combined general indicator- overall women empowerment. It is found that joint titled women are more likely to participate in community activities, to have local organizational capacity, and to be aware of their land rights approximately by 18% point more than untitled women. In addition, joint titled women are more likely to have tenure security and dare to protect their land rights as well as to have freedom of physical mobility and autonomy approximately by 8% point more compared to untitled women. However, no significant difference is found in participation rate on household decision making between joint titled and untitled women

Generally, the empirical results from the PSM analysis indicate that joint titled women are more likely to be empowered in five out of six dimensions of women empowerment indicators compared to untitled women. The ‘overall women empowerment’ indicator shows that joint titled women are more empowered by 10% point as compared to untitled women. ATT for women empowerment index - constructed using game data and defined only for 244 households - is also significant at 1% significance level and confirms the above result. The tobit regression results using the experiment data also supports the results of the propensity

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score matching; land title status significantly affect women empowerment (women empowerment index) at 1% significance level.

In conclusion , the findings of this study confirms the widely held view that providing joint land rights for women can expand the opportunity sets of women thereby empowering them in developing countries (World Bank, 2006). It also increases productivity, investment, and facilitates land rental market. This means that joint titling of land rights has both equity and efficiency gains. Therefore, extending the joint land registration and certification program to other areas and regions where it is not implemented yet may help to empower women in different aspects of their life, although other complementary measures, such as girls education, health, employment, access to credit, and market participation are probably needed as well. The implication of the women empowerment effect of joint land rights is far more than just empowering women but rather, it is also for the other factors which are affected by women empowerment. It is argued that empowering women means to realize her human rights, increase her productivity, and promote welfare and wellbeing of the rest of the household members (particularly child nutrition and education) and thereby the society (see Bezabih and Holden, 2010 and Allendorf, 2007).

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References

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Heckman, J. J., LaLonde, R. J., & Smith, J. A. (1999). The economics and econometrics of active labor market programs. Handbook of labor economics, 3, 1865-2097. Holden, S. T., Deininger, K., & Ghebru, H. (2009). Impacts of low-cost land certification on investment and productivity. American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 91(2), 359- 373. Holden, S. T., Deininger, K., & Ghebru, H. (2011). Tenure insecurity, gender, low-cost land certification and land rental market participation in Ethiopia. Journal of Development Studies, 47(1), 31-47. Holden, S., & Tefera, T. (2008). From being property of men to becoming equal owners: Early impacts of land registration and certification on women in Southern Ethiopia. Nairobi, Kenya: UNHABITAT. Imbens, G. W. (2004). Nonparametric estimation of average treatment effects under exogeneity: A review. Review of Economics and Statistics, 86(1), 4-29. Jahnke, H. E., Tacher, G., Keil, P., & Rojat, D. (1998). Livestock production in tropical Africa with special reference to the tsetse-affected zone. Retrieved from http://www.ilri.cgiar.org/InfoServ/Webpub/fulldocs/X5443E/X5443E04.HTM Joireman, S. F. (2008). The mystery of capital formation in Sub-Saharan Africa: women, property rights and customary law. World Development, 36(7), 1233-1246. Kabeer, N. (1999). Resources, agency, achievements: Reflections on the measurement of women's empowerment. Development and Change, 30(3), 435-464. Lechner, M. (2000). An evaluation of public-sector-sponsored continuous vocational training programs in East Germany. Journal of Human Resources, 35(2), 347-375. Ledyard, J. O. (1994). Public goods: A survey of experimental research. In A. E. Roth & J. H. Kagel (Eds.), The handbook of experimental economics (Vol. 1, pp. 111-194 ). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Leuven, E., & Sianesi, B. (2003). PSMATCH2: Stata module to perform full Mahalanobis and propensity score matching, common support graphing, and covariate imbalance testing. Retrieved from http://ideas.repec.org/c/boc/bocode/s432001.html Lundberg, S., & Pollak, R. A. (1993). Separate spheres bargaining and the marriage market. Journal of Political Economy, 988-1010. Mahmud, S., Shah, N. M., & Becker, S. (2012). Measurement of women's empowerment in rural Bangladesh. World Development, 40(3), 610-619. Manser, M., & Brown, M. (1980). Marriage and household decision-making: A bargaining analysis. International Economic Review, 21(1), 31-44. Gangl, M. (2004). RBOUNDS: Stata module to perform Rosenbaum sensitivity analysis for average treatment effects on the treated: Boston College Department of Economics. Retrieved from http://ideas.repec.org/c/boc/bocode/s438301.html Meinzen-Dick, R. S., Brown, L. R., Feldstein, H. S., & Quisumbing, A. R. (1997). Gender, property rights, and natural resources. World Development, 25(8), 1303-1315. Meinzen-Dick, R. S., & Quisumbing, A. R. (2008). Strengthening women's control of assets for better development outcomes. IFPRI. Narayan, D. (2005). Measuring empowerment: Cross-disciplinary perspectives. Washington, D.C.: The World Bank. Quisumbing, A. R., & Maluccio, J. A. (2000). Intrahousehold allocation and gender relations: New empirical evidence from four developing countries. Washington DC: International Food Policy Research Institute Rahmato, D. (2009). Land rights and tenure security: Rural land registration in Ethiopia. In J. Ubink, A. Hoekema & W. Assies (Eds.), Legalizing land rights: Local practices, state responses and tenure security in Africa, Asia and Latin America. 2009: Amsterdam University Press.

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Rosenbaum, P. (2002). Observational studies. New York: Springer Rosenbaum, P. R., & Rubin, D. B. (1983). The central role of the propensity score in observational studies for causal effects. Biometrika, 70(1), 41-55. Rosenbaum, P. R., & Rubin, D. B. (1985). Constructing a control group using multivariate matched sampling methods that incorporate the propensity score. The American Statistician, 39(1), 33-38. Sen, A. (1990). Gender and cooperative conflicts, in Tinker, I.(ed.), Persistent inequalities: Women and world development, Oxford University Press. Sianesi, B. (2004). An evaluation of the Swedish system of active labor market programs in the 1990s. Review of Economics and Statistics, 86(1), 133-155. Teklu, A. (2005). Research report 4 land registration and women’s land rights in Amhara region, Ethiopia. London: IIED. Wiig, H., Braten, R., & Fuentes, D. O. (2011). The impacts of land on women's empowerment in Peruvian communities. A background paper for the World Development Report 2012. Washington D.C.: World Bank. Wiig, H. (2012). Do joint land titles induce Peruvian women to take part in decision-making?, NIBR Working Paper 104. OSLO: Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research. Williamson, C. R. (2010). The two sides of de Soto: Property rights, land titling, and development. Paper presented at the THE ANNUAL. World Bank. (2000). World Development Report 2000/2001: Attacking poverty: Oxford University Press. New York. World Bank. (2006). Land policy and administration. Washington D.C.: The World Bank World Bank. (2011). World Development Indicators. Retrieved July 1, 2013 http://databank.worldbank.org/data/views/reports/tableview.aspx

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Appendix

A. Women empowerment indicator categories

Table A1: Women empowerment indicator categories Variables Joint titled Untitled Difference women women Percent Percent Percent HH decision making participation in … Crop choice .9078 .8967 .0111 Land allocation .9149 .8696 .0453 Land inheritance .9007 .9022 -.0015 Land renting-out .8511 .8207 .0304 Land rent-in .8652 .8641 .0011 Plot responsible person .9078 .8696 .0382 Land investments and management .9220 .8370 .0850** Construction of house on the land .9362 .8804 .0557* Whether to use agricultural technology .9574 .8804 .0770** Whether to save HH income .9220 .875 .0470 Expenditure in large items .9362 .8478 .0883** Expenditure in small items .9645 .8804 .0841*** Number of offspring to be born .9220 .7663 .1557*** Whether to send children to school .9787 .9348 .0439* Whether to use contraceptive .9149 .7717 .1432*** Whether a sick HH member has to go to health center .9433 .8967 .0465 Whether to sell or buy animals .9078 .8370 .0708* Labor supply decision .9007 .8207 .0801** Overall participation in HH decisionsa .9196 .8584 .0612 ** Frequency of participation in village meeting .7305 .4783 .2522*** Participation in voting .6099 .3804 .2295*** Participation in public information meeting .3404 .1467 .1937*** Participation in soil and water conservation .8582 .5652 .2929*** Participation in construction of public center .6667 .5109 .1558*** Participation in road maintaining .3830 .2989 .0841*** Participation in school, mosque or church building .8511 .7228 .1282*** Participation in community activitiesb .6429 .4570 .1858 *** Member of women associations .4043 .1957 .2086*** Member of Iqqub (ROSCA) .3972 .2717 .1254** Member of village development committee .3475 .1304 .2171*** Local organizational capacityc .3830 .1993 .1837*** Women’s knowledge of the law… A person >18 and whose livelihood is in agriculture .7730 .5489 .2241*** has the right to access land Equal joint land certification .9504 .7500 .2004*** Equal rights upon divorce .9858 .9239 .0619** Equal division of harvest from field upon divorce .8440 .7446 .0994**

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The right to transfer land through inheritance .9716 .8696 .1021*** Women’s equal land inheritance right .9645 .8370 .1276*** Use right to land has no time limit .8440 .4185 .4255*** Illegal to sell land .9362 .8370 .0992*** HH head shall get the agreement of the family to lease- .9787 .8315 .1472*** out land A wife can deny her husband to rent out part of the HH .9787 .9239 .0548** land Land rental contract should be reported to kebele .9787 .7609 .2179*** Land renter is responsible for rented land management .9574 .8152 .1422*** It is illegal to plant eucalyptus trees on farmland .7872 .6304 .1568*** Household shall lose its land if not conserved .8936 .6793 .2143*** Procedure how to litigate land conflicts at courts .5461 .2663 .2798*** A complaint has a right to appeal to higher courts .9574 .7120 .2455*** Land can be expropriated with full compensation .9362 .5761 .3601*** Women’s knowledge of their land rightsd .8990 .7132 .1858 *** Confidence in the legal system 1 .9130 .0870*** Tenure security women .9787 .8804 .0983*** Dare to protect their land rights .8865 .7717 .1148*** Expect equal land share upon divorce .9291 .8859 .0432 Expect equal land share upon death of husband .9858 .9511 .0347* Tenure security and dare to protect their lande .9560 .8804 .0756*** rights Can go to market alone .7801 .5815 .1986*** Can decide by her own to travel and visit family and .3404 .2772 .0633 friends Can take her children to health clinic alone .8369 .6685 .1684*** Whether she need permission from husband to attend .2766 .3315 -.0549 meetings Physical mobility and autonomyf .5585 .4647 .0938 *** Overall women empowerment .8230 .6951 .1278 *** Observations 141 184 *, **, *** shows significant mean differences at 10% (P<0.10), 5% (P<0.05) and 1% (P<0.01), respectively a, c & d All questions related to HH decision making, local organizational capacity and women’s knowledge of their rights have response options of ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Response options are coded 1 and 0, respectively. Note: Here and after now onwards, 1 means empowered and 0 means not empowered. b All questions except on the first and second have response options of ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Response options are coded 1 and 0, respectively. On the other hand, questions on participation in village meeting and participation in voting have four response options: 1) always, 2) sometimes, 3) rarely, and 4) never. Response option 2 is recoded to 1 and response options 3 & 4 are recoded to 0, respectively. e The first three questions on (confidence in the legal system, women’s tenure security, and dare to protect their land rights) have response options of ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Response options are coded 1 and 0, respectively. The last two categories whether women expect equal land share upon divorce and expect equal land share upon death of husband have six response options: 1) all, 2) more than half, 3) half, 4) less than half, 5) nothing and 6) do not know. Response options 2 & 3 are recoded to 1 and response options 4, 5 & 6 are recoded to 0, respectively. f Questions on can decide by her own to travel and visit family and friends as well as can take her children to health clinic alone have ‘yes’ and ‘no’ response options and coded 1 and 0, respectively. On the other hand, question on can go to the market alone has three response options: 1) yes alone, 2) yes if someone accompanies & 3) not at all. Response options 2 & 3 are recoded to 0. Also, question on whether she needs permission from her husband to attend meetings has three response options: 1) yes 0) no, & 2) do not know. 1 & 2 are recoded to 0 and 0 recoded to 1.

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B. Hypothesized explanatory variables

The explanatory variables along with their expected relationships to program participation (joint titling) and the dependent variables (women empowerment indicators) in the PSM method and women empowerment index in tobit regression model of the experiment are given below.

Land certification: is expected to have a positive effect on women empowerment. Land certification is a dummy variable that have a value (D=1) if the woman has a joint land certificate and (D=0) if the woman does not have a joint land certificate. It is a dependent variable in the participation equation in the first stage of the propensity score matching analysis and an independent variable in tobit regression model of the experiment.

Age of woman: Cohort effect in gender culture is controlled by age of woman. The older the woman, the higher influence she has from old traditional practices. As a result, it is expected to affect women empowerment and program participation negatively.

Years of marriage: The longer the couples have lived together, the more the woman learns how to influence her partner. As a result, years of marriage is expected to have a positive effect on women empowerment and program participation.

Couple age difference: The older the wife compared to the husband, the more influential she will be and is controlled by couple age difference. It is expected to affect women empowerment and program participation positively.

Woman literacy: Informed and intelligent woman can have a considerable effect on household decision making. Education might also increase her lobbying ability to get joint land titling. Woman literacy is a control variable for these effects and expected to have a positive effect on women empowerment and program participation. It is a dummy variable and takes a value (1) if the wife in the principal couple is able to read and write, otherwise (0).

Husband literacy: Woman whose husband is educated might be encouraged by her husband to take part in household decision making and in the community and/or being inspired by her husband; she can become influential in the household and in the community thereby increasing her empowerment level. Similar to the case of the wife, education might increase lobbying ability of the husband to get land title for the household. It is expected to affect women empowerment and program participation positively. It is also a dummy variable and takes a value (1) if the husband in the principal couple is able to read and write, otherwise (0).

Children above 15 years old: It is also argued that the more number of older offspring still live in the household, the more people can potentially replace her in the household decision- making. The variable, children above 15 years old, is a dummy (1 if there are, 0 otherwise) and is expected to affect women empowerment and program participation negatively.

Access to social programs: Any social program that operates in the study areas can also have an impact on women empowerment as NGOs and state programs often try to change gender culture by making it integral parts of their activity in the countryside. NGOs may also

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promote and lobby for joint titling and create awareness (particularly, on women) about its use in its gender equalizing effect. Access to social program is a dummy variable with value 1 for presence of any social program in the area. It is expected to have a positive effect on women empowerment and program participation.

Assets brought to marriage: A woman who has access to resources and hence wealthy is influential in the household decisions and in the community. It can also increase her bargaining power to get joint titling. The variable, assets brought to marriage, is a control that takes in to account this effect. It refers to the amount of hectares of land both owned and inherited and/or number of livestock in Tropical Livestock Unit (TLU) brought to marriage. To add the two values, both values are first standardized to able to add them together as they have originally different units of measurement. It is expected to have a positive effect on women empowerment and program participation.

Distance from main road: Households close to the main road might be first in the titling program and have access to inputs and market which in turn increase their bargaining power. Distance from main road which is a control variable for road access is measured by the distance in minutes walking that the household is far from the main road. It is expected to affect women empowerment and program participation negatively.

Distance from parents: Woman who is close to her family residential place feels more secure from any suppression and beating of her husband as well as less vulnerable to be deceived during land registration and certification. The control variable used for this is distance from parents measured by the time it takes walking for the woman to travel to her parents living place and it is expected to have negative relation with women empowerment and program participation.

Additional explanatory variables entered in the tobit regression model of the experiment data and discussion of their definitions and expected relationships between the newly added explanatory variables and women empowerment index are presented below.

Marriage contract is an independent dummy variable which was originally a three categorical variable and recoded to 1 if the marriage contract between the spouses is written and 0 if it is oral or they do not have marriage contract. We expected it to have a positive effects on women empowerment since women with a written marriage contract have the possibility to safe guard their land ownership using their marriage contract as bargaining chips as compared to those who do have oral contract or none.

Knew husband is another dummy independent variable which takes a value 1 if the wife knew her husband before she married him or 0 other wise. This variables control for the effect of past traditional practices on women empowerment since in the study areas, early marriage where mostly girls do not knew their husbands are practiced (parent of the bride chose the husband). Woman who knew her husband before she married him are assumed to have more power in household decisions just like she are able to decide the person she marry in a marriage market than the woman whose marriage is arranged by her parents. As a result, it is expected to have positive effect on women empowerment.

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Contributions to public goods by spouses are considered the norms of social behavior similar to different cooperation situations in their daily lives (Wiig et al, 2011). As a result, decisions made together might differ from those made individually. We expect the couple to agree on the level of contribution that is closest to the highest of the individual choices. To control for the effect of the joint process, we included a variable Trend, which is a positive dummy with value 1 if the individual choice of the woman is higher than the individual choice of the man and 0 otherwise.

C. Experiment (game) protocol

Public Goods Game to Measure Bargaining Power

Instruction to Experimenters

 Tell participants that they are going to earn money in the tasks, but the amount will depend on how they and other participants in the community play the tasks.  Anonymity of decisions is very important for the experiment. Please, therefore, make sure and take care that participants don’t know about the decisions of their spouse or other community members under any circumstances.  Don’t tell for any of the participants that they will do the decisions jointly until both have finished the individual part. They are not supposed to know this while they make their individual decisions to avoid a possible deviation between individual and joint decision ex-ante.  Don’t tell about any results from the individual part of the experiment before they enter the joint part to reduce possible learning effects across the tasks.  Don’t tell the identity of their co-players under any condition but let them know that the co-players are from the same community and that their spouse is not part of the same group. To do so, draw groups once all experiments are done in the community.  Don’t tell the participants how much the other group members contributed, but only the total contribution to the group, and their own earnings even after the tasks end.  After the introduction, take the spouses into different rooms to start privately the individual part of the task and reunite them to play the joint task once both finish the individual part.  Write down their answers as they are. Don’t push the participants to discuss when they play the joint tasks. If only one is speaking, then write down his/her answers, as long as the other doesn’t object. Only if the other one objects you should wait until they agree.  Take great care to make sure that players understand clearly the rules of the game.

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Introduction

Thank you very much for your time to answer these questions. Now, we are going to the part of the survey from which you can earn some money.

The study is being conducted by Ethiopian and Dutch researchers, who will use the results only for getting more general knowledge about how people make decisions in their daily lives. Any information that you give us during the research will be kept strictly confidential and private even from your spouse, and only the investigators in this project will get to know your answers. Your and your spouse’s names will not appear on the result of the study.

In these tasks, we will ask you to make decisions. There are no right or wrong decisions here. You can make money in these tasks. But the amount you will earn depends not only on your own decision, but also on the decision of other people who take part in this study. It is important that you understand the task before you make your decision, otherwise you might regret it afterwards. Therefore, you should ask questions whenever I am not clear. Note that nobody except the researchers in this project will get to know what you will decide or how much money you will earn. We will tell you the results and give you the money in private, with only you and one or two of the enumerators present. The money that you will earn during the experiment will be given to you once we finish these exercises in your community (if possible, on …. between … and … o’clock).

Do you have any questions before we begin the tasks? (Please give them sufficient time)

Ok!

Instructions

I) Instructions for the Private Part of the Task

You are a part of a group together with three other people, both men and women, who are selected like you to take part in this task. Therefore, your group has 4 participants, including you. As each of you is guaranteed anonymity, none of you will know who the other people in your group are. Husband and wife are never in the same group.

Each group member will be given 15 Birr by us. You can choose how much of the 15 Birr you would like to keep for yourself and how much of it you would like to contribute to the group. Now, your decision is to allocate how much of the 15 Birr you would like to keep for yourself and how much to give to the group. We will double the amount of Birr that you give to the group. It means that for each Birr you give to the group, the group earns 2 Birr. We call the money earned by the group as “common pool”. All other group members will make the same decision. All of you will make the decision anonymously and we will not reveal to anyone your decision. As a result, nobody including your spouse will know what you will receive and what choices you make.

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The amount of money you choose to keep is simply yours to keep. The sum which all group members together give to the group, the common pool, will be divided evenly amongst all four group members upon the completion of the task. Everybody gets the same amount of the common pool, no matter how much they each put into the common pool.

Your total earnings will thus consist of two parts:

1. The amount of money you choose to keep

2. Your share of the common pool

Use the following and other examples to make clear the rules for the participants using real money.

Example 1:

Imagine you and the other group members each put Br. 15 Birr in the common pool. This means, you each keep Br. 0. The total contribution to the common pool is Br. 120, which is double of Br. 60 that you all contributed to the pool. This total sum will be split into 4 equally big parts afterwards, so you and the other group members each receive an accumulated earning of Br. 0 + Br. 30 = Br. 30 .

Example 2:

Imagine you and the other group members each put Br. 0 in the common pool. This means, you each keep Br. 15. The common pool thus contains Br. 0, and therefore, nobody receives anything from the common pool. You and the other group members each receive an accumulated earning of Br. 15 + Br. 0 = Br. 15.

Example 3:

Imagine you put Br. 10 in the common pool, while the other group members put Br. 12. This means, you keep Br. 5, while the three others each keep Br. 3. The common pool thus contains 92, which is a double of 46 that you all contributed to the pool. So you each receive Br.23 from the common pool. Your accumulated earning will then be Br. 5 + Br. 23 = Br. 28 while each of the other group members’ earnings will be Br. 3 + Br. 23 = Br. 26.

Do you have any questions?

Your decision

Here are your 15 Birr. You now have to decide how much Birr you want to keep for you and how much to put in the common pool. Note that this is your actual decision. You can choose any amount between 0 and 15 Birr.

I choose to put Br. _____ in the common pool.

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Exit Type Question:

How much do you think the other members of your group put on average in the common pool? The average of what the other three group members put in the common pool is Br._____.

II) Instructions for the Joint Part of the Task

In this part of the game, you are now to make exactly the same decision as in the individual task, but now you have to decide upon the same contribution level. New groups of 4 participants will be drawn, while the spouses will still not be in the same groups. But you just have to make the same contribution level to your respective groups.

You are a part of a group together with three other people, both men and women, who are selected like you to take part in this task. Therefore, your group has 4 participants, including you. As each of you is guaranteed anonymity, none of you will know who the other people in your group are. Husband and wife are never in the same group.

Each group member will be given 15 Birr by us. You (as a pair) can choose how much of the 15 Birr you would like to keep for yourself and how much of it you would like to contribute to the group. But here you should make a joint decision. Now, your decision is to allocate how much of the 15 Birr you would like to keep for yourself and how much to give to the group. We will double the amount of Birr that you give to the group. It means that for each Birr you give to the group, the group earns 2 Birr. We call the money earned by the group as “common pool”. All other group members will make the same decision. All of you will make the decision anonymously and we will not reveal to anyone your decision. As a result, nobody including your spouse will know what you will receive.

The amount of money you choose to keep is simply yours to keep. The sum which all group members together give to the group, the common pool, will be divided evenly amongst all four group members upon the completion of the experiment. Everybody gets the same amount of the common pool, no matter how much they each put into the common pool. But you may not get the same amount as your group members could not be from the same decision groups.

Once again, your total earnings will thus consist of two parts:

1. The amount of money you choose to keep

2. Your share of the common pool

(Repeat the examples if needed to make sure that both spouses recall the rules of the game clearly).

Do you have any questions?

Your decision

Here are your 15 Birr. You now have to decide jointly how much Birr you want to keep for you and how much to put in the common pool. Note that this is your actual decision. You can

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choose any amount between 0 and 15 Birr. (Let them take their time to reach upon an agreed decision).

We choose to put Br. _____ in the common pool.

Thank you very much. You will receive all your payments on … (on a certain date), by showing up at … (place) at ... (time). We also ask you not to talk about the content of these games with other people in the community before that time, as we want all participants to make their individual decisions.

Exit Type Questions:

For the enumerator(s): Please give answer to the following questions from your observation just when the game comes to end but never ask players to give you answers.

S. Questions Unit Answer no 1 How much time does it take them to reach on an agreed decision? Minutes 2 Who talked much in the process of the bargain to make the joint Code decision? 1=The wife, 0=The husband 3 Was there a threat to force the other spouse to accept one’s Code decision? 1=Yes, 0=No 4 If Yes, who was applying the threat? 1=The wife, 0=The husband Code 5 Who was more cooperative in the process of the negotiation to Code reach on the same decision? 1=The wife, 0=The husband 6 Please note the number of proposals being made to contribute to the Number common pool by both spouses in the process. How many such proposals were made in the entire bargaining process? 7 Who did make more such proposals during their negotiation? 1=The Code wife, 0=The husband

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