Property rights are a cornerstone of economic development and social justice, and data on perceptions of security of property rights are required to monitor global initiatives such as the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Forests and Fisheries and the Sustainable Development Goals. Yet, perceptions of security of tenure have never been assessed at the global level, preventing a clear understanding of the magnitude and nature of citizens' experience of security and insecurity related to crucial assets such as housing and land.
The Global Property Rights Index (PRIndex) initiative has gathered data on the perception of tenure security in Brazil, Colombia, Egypt, Greece, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Peru and Tanzania over the past two years in an effort to create a baseline global dataset to support the achievement of secure property rights around the world. PRIndex is based upon nationally representative surveys targeting 1,000 individuals aged 15 and older in these eight countries. The number of countries covered by the survey will be greatly expanded in the coming years.
In collaboration with Land Alliance, Inc., the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and Gallup, and with the support of the Omidyar Network and the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID), The Land Portal has created a platform that breaks down the methodology, the status and the main findings of PRIndex, and links to key news and information related to perceptions of tenure security. The Land Portal presents two dynamic and interactive dimensions of PRIndex survey results, including the level of perceived tenure security and whether they feel secure, somewhat insecure or insecure and the rate of property documentation by country and urban and rural sectors, further analyzing the results among homeowners and renters.
With regard to rate of property documentation, both homeowners and renters were asked if they had property documentation and what type of document they had to support their right to live there, and their responses were classified as having formal documentation, informal documentation and no documentation.
In terms of perceived tenure security, survey participants were ask if they felt under threat to lose their housing rights against their will in the next five years and the likelihood of this occurring. Respondents in each country were classified as perceiving their tenure as secure, somewhat insecure and very insecure, further breaking down the results by homeowners and renters.
PRIndex data is published on the Land Portal with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license, and can be freely reused. The full dataset is available for direct download from the Land Portal.
This new PRIndex dataset and visualization tool on the Land Portal provide key information that is critical to monitoring of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and in particular Indicator 1.4.2 on the proportion of total adult population with secure tenure rights to land, with legally recognized documentation and who perceive their rights to land as secure, by sex and by type of tenure. With 6th Meeting of the Inter-Agency and Expert Group on the Sustainable Development Goal Indicators (IAEG-SDGs), which will take place Manama, Bahrain from 11-14 November 2017, just on the horizon, this platform will inform the decisions on methodological approaches taken by National Statistical Offices (NSOs) at this meeting and beyond.