In: Economics
How can ownership eliminate poverty?
Land is a critical asset, especially for rural poor people, as it provides a means of livelihood through crop production and sale and other products. Property rights over housing provide shelter, dignity and a means of accumulation for both the rural and urban poor. Those who do Without property rights, the ability or even the authority to make investments in the land where they live or farm that might lead to higher returns. In certain instances, land may be used as collateral for credit in order to invest in the land, or exchanged for capital in order to start another operation producing revenue. Landless people are excluded from these incentives, which is why they often rate among the poor. For example , data from South Asia, home to approximately 40 per cent of the world 's poor, show that poverty is strongly linked to landlessness and insecure access to land. The strong connections between poverty and tenure insecurity have prompted many land reforms. Redistributive land reforms that transfer land from large landlords to landless people , especially farm labourers Long history, above all in the latter half of the 20th century. Since redistributive land reforms have both economic and political costs of obtaining land For weak, constitutional reforms to ensure greater protection of tenure on land they already occupy, it may seem a The way to confer property rights on the poor is relatively simpler. More than 90 per cent of the rural population in Africa access land through customary mechanisms . Property rights have a fundamental role to play not only in boosting economic productivity, but also in increasing The social status and integrity of those who own it. To strengthen the rights of poor people to own property Hence, it may make important contributions to poverty reduction. Not unexpectedly, the Commission for the Legal Empowerment of the Vulnerable, after access to justice and the rule of law, proposed property rights as the second element of legal empowerment. This is laudable as it calls for property rights as part of a broader reform, including access to justice and the creation of a legal framework based on what operates in "extralegal" structures that the poor employ. Access to justice would imply that systems are accessible to the poor, and reduce concerns about the misuse of formalization to take away their property. But if access to justice does not precede or accompany property rights formalisation, the Formalization may create incentives for the elites to grab even stronger resource claims. Too regularly, Property rights reforms have imported formalization models which are not or have not been based on local realities Provided financial and human resources to provide decentralized systems guaranteeing full access for all. The outcome could make matters worse for the poor.