Methodological weaknesses including use of a non-representative sample that cannot be traced back to a frame to allow sample weights to be calculated;<sup>13</sup> asking information on transactions and their formalization for one of the household’s plots only without having first listed all of them; and failing to cross-check households’ responses against official LAIS information to check that the respondents’ subjective notion of ‘registration’ indeed refers to the official process are likely to introduce large errors. Studies that use such methods (Biraro _et al._ 2015) can provide case study evidence to understand underlying processes but not figures that can assist decision-makers.

Data from the household sample (table A1) suggest that about a third of households are female-headed, their asset endowments are limited, and mean assets (excluding land) are at US$ 300. 94% of households own on average 0.68 ha of agricultural land (from 0.58 ha in the South to 0.91 ha in the East) with average parcel size of 0.18 ha (table A2) well below the 1 ha below which subdivision is legally prohibited. With 24% and 28% of the sample, respectively, reporting to have acquired or transferred out land (62% having purchased land, 46 % having inherited), land markets are active. This is consistent with some 1,800 parcels with an average size of 0.12 ha having been acquired—41% purchased, 29% inherited, and 16% rentedsince early 2012.<sup>14</sup> Perceived levels of tenure security are high and awareness of legal restrictions on subdivision seems low. A test of legal knowledge suggests high levels of awareness of gender-issues but little knowledge of legal provisions and procedural aspects for property transfers (table A3). Moreover, while 65% of women know that land acquired by couples married under the common property regime needs to be registered jointly, this is the case for only 46% of men, providing one possible explanation of the fact that the gender benefits from LTR may be slowly eroding (see table 3, panel C).

The survey suggests that, between 2012 and 2015, 1,147 or 12% of parcels owned by households in our sample had been newly acquired. Of these, 51% were registered in the new owner’s name under LTR, 47% had not started the registration process, and 2% went for subsequent registration. Appendix tables 3 and 4 illustrate the procedure employed by providing a side by side comparison of information from LAIS and the household survey regarding area and owners’ names for a given UPI with table 4 including an additional column indicating that the name of the original owner in the 2012 round of our household survey matches

> 13 As is easily verified from table 1, of the 8.55 million parcels in either of these categories, 83% are agricultural, 15% residential, and 2% commercial. From the documentation provided, it seems that in the Biraro et al. (2015) sample proportions are 27%, 51%, and 22%, i.e., commercial and residential land are overrepresented by factors of 3.4 and 11.5 while agricultural land is underrepresented by a factor of 0.33. Even if there were no other issues with their methodology, any estimates arrived at without applying weights will provide a misleading picture of the national situation.

> 14 Note that Rwandan law prevents the subdivision of agricultural land less than 1 ha. Although we do not have information on subdivision of agricultural land in our data, the fact that the majority of parcels transferred being small agricultural parcels (smaller than the average parcel size of the sampled villages) could likely imply illegal fragmentation and might, in turn, lead to non-registration of transactions. A deeper understanding of this issue requires detailed data on the parent parcels of transacted parcels.

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