The program of land tenure regularization (LTR) aims to clarify rights on all of Rwanda estimated 10 million land parcels as a precondition for their formalization and full legal recognition, manifested in the award of title certificates to land holders. For this study, researchers from the World Bank assessed the impact of the rural pilots that preceded the national roll-out of Rwanda's LTR program using a geographic discontinuity design with spatial fixed effects. The study focused on the following questions: the extent of perceived land tenure security; the level of land transactions; land-related investment undertaken; the treatment of boys and girls in terms of inheritance; perception about the fairness of the process and access to information. In the absence of a usable baseline survey, researchers relied on cross-sectional data, sampled from a narrow band on both sides of the pilot cell borders to assess program impacts. A survey administered in April–May 2010, about two and a half years after the start of LTR, was used to obtain information for 3,554 households with some 6,330 parcels.
