The effect of smallholder land tenure on child malnutrition in Nigeria

Hussain Ibrahim (), Sheryl L. Hendriks and Hettie Schönfeldt

Land Use Policy, 2022, vol. 119, issue C

Abstract: Most farmers in Nigeria are food-insecure smallholders without secure land tenure. Children growing up in these households may be at higher risk of malnutrition. However, there is a paucity of evidence of the effect of land tenure on child nutrition. The present paper examines whether smallholders' mode of land acquisition and tenure documentation could influence child malnutrition in Nigeria. The paper relied on the three-round Nigerian nationally representative panel data of smallholder farming households with small children. The World Health Organisation's standards were used to determine child anthropometric deficits such as stunting, wasting, underweight, overweight and stunted-overweight. The study analysed the effect of smallholders' mode of land acquisition and tenure documentation on child malnutrition using the flexible panel difference-in-difference (flexpaneldid) model and fixed effect (FE) logistic regression. Households on family-inherited land were more likely to have stunted, underweight and overweight children. However, households that held community-distributed land were less likely to have stunted, overweight and underweight children. While the formal land certificate holders had a 13% chance of having stunted children, the informal land document holders were seven percent and five percent less likely to have wasted and underweight children. Smallholder land tenure had a small but relevant effect on reducing child malnutrition with community-level land distribution and informal land documents in Nigeria.

Keywords: Child malnutrition; Land tenure; Smallholders; Nigeria; flexpaneldid model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264837722002411
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:lauspo:v:119:y:2022:i:c:s0264837722002411

DOI: 10.1016/j.landusepol.2022.106214

Access Statistics for this article

Land Use Policy is currently edited by Jaap Zevenbergen

More articles in Land Use Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joice Jiang ().