Land Inequality, Gender Land Disparity and Poverty in Rural Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe has redistributed vast quantities of arable land to the landless, women and poor communal farmers in order to reduce inequality, yet poverty and gender disparity in land ownership is still discernible. This paper explores the relationship between poverty, gender disparity and land inequality using a combination of descriptive statistics, regression discontinuity and a simple regression. The results reveal a gender gap in land ownership and larger land inequality among female headed households. In female-headed households, the proportion of poor is smaller and per capita consumption is higher than in male-headed households. The results further reveal that the transfer of arable land to women will only reduce poverty and promote equality if it targets women without land and those at the lower end of land distribution. Spatially, poverty can be reduced by increasing the share of women who own arable land in regional districts. The main policy implication is that there are substantial spillover benefits from addressing gender inequality in land ownership if land redistribution policy targets women at the lower end of plot size distribution.