Inheritance Practices, Investment Incentives and Women’s Control Over Land in Rural Kenya

Benjamin Linkow ()

Journal of African Economies, 2019, vol. 28, issue 3, 304-322

Abstract: Land related investment decisions are shaped by both the formal and informal institutions governing land tenure and acquisition. We model customary inheritance practices of agricultural Kikuyu households in Kenya, and show theoretically and empirically that the uncertainty embedded in customary inheritance practices reduces long-term investments in land among potential heirs. Moreover, these effects are only observed in the case of male testators and potential heirs. The results provide evidence that despite legislation formalising women’s rights to property, control over land continues to follow the informal traditional patrilineal system in important ways.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jae/ejy025 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:oup:jafrec:v:28:y:2019:i:3:p:304-322.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of African Economies is currently edited by Francis Teal

More articles in Journal of African Economies from Centre for the Study of African Economies Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().