Land Tenure and Agricultural Investment: Do Ugandan Polygynous Households Comport with Theory?

Secure land tenure is critical in enabling farmers to make productivity-enhancing investments. While substantial research exists on the relationship between property rights and investment, this relationship is complicated in the presence of polygyny and customary law. If households are acting according to theory, we would expect households to make investments in land held under more individualized and secure tenure (non-customary). We test if this pattern holds across household types, namely monogamous vs. polygynous households in Uganda. Using five waves of the Uganda Living Standards Measurement Study-Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA), we measure the effects of parcel tenure on both fertilizer and long-term agricultural investment across different marriage structures. Our results suggest that customary land tenure in monogamous households leads to a decrease in organic and inorganic fertilizer use, and a decrease in the likelihood of erosion prevention and planting perennial crops. Contrary to expectations, polygynous households invest more in fertilizer and fallowing on customary land. Our results suggest that land privatization, without concurrent attention to customary law and marriage structure, could have a deleterious effect on investment incentive mechanisms.