# **1. Introduction**

Security of property rights to land affects incentives for land-attached investment and female empowerment, while the ability to access formally registered documents is a precondition for transactions with strangers to foster structural change, emergence of financial markets, and transparency. Yet, the fact that legal and institutional arrangements governing land ownership and access evolved over long historical periods in response to local conditions led to enormous variation over space that limited the scope for globally comparable indicators on land tenure security that could then be targeted by specific programs. It may even have contributed a focus on rather simplistic shortcuts (e.g., “titles”) that fail to do justice to the underlying complexities and, by focusing on inputs rather than the desired outcomes, may send inappropriate signals.

To address this, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) define two indicators (1.4.2 and 5.a.1) related to land.<sup>1</sup> While the latter focuses on the agricultural population, the indicators require nation-wide data covering (i) access to formally documented rights; (ii) transferability via bequest or sale; and (iii) perceived tenure security. To build local capacity and facilitate coordination in data collection and based on guidance by the inter-agency expert group on SDGs (IAEG-SDG), FAO, UN-Habitat and the World Bank designed a module for inclusion in ongoing household surveys by National Statistical Agencies (FAO _et al_ , 2018). Simultaneously, to obtain data more quickly at a larger scale, use of a ‘global poll’ has been advocated by some and considerable resources were mobilized in support of an initiative, the ‘Prindex’,<sup>2</sup> to implement it.

However, while there has been extensive conceptual discussion, empirical data have not been analyzed in any detail to explore if proposed methodologies are sound and provide a basis for actionable policy advice. This paper aims to start filling this gap by using the case of Zambia where the SDG module, with supplemental questions on demand for title, was included in the country’s 2018 Labor Force Survey (LFS). Data generated in this way can also be compared to the Prindex global poll administered in Zambia during the same period. While our analysis focuses on the LFS, an evidence-based and coherent policy dialogue on land will only be possible if data provided by different initiatives are conceptually clear and complementary.

Data from the LFS suggest that in Zambia transferability of land is limited, few parcels have title, and tenure insecurity is widespread: only 42% of land owners can bequeath and 36% sell their land and 44% perceive a risk of losing it over the next 5 years. Less than 10% of households have title, 13% an informal document or incomplete title and 55% of those without title want to acquire it and are willing to pay a median of

> 1 SDG 1.4.2 aims to measure “the proportion of total adult population with secure tenure rights to land, with legally recognized documentation and who perceive their rights to land as secure, by sex and by type of tenure” whereas SDG 5.a.1 focuses on “the proportion of total agricultural population with ownership or secure rights over agricultural land, by gender” and “the share of women among owners or rights-bearers of agricultural land, by type of tenure” (FAO _et al_ , 2018).

> 2 Prindex <u>(www.prindex.net) is implemented by private contractors, with oversight from the UK’s Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and</u> financial support mainly from DFID and the Omidyar network.

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