Gender Equality, Land Rights and Public Service Delivery in Senegal

Last registered on February 24, 2026

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Gender Equality, Land Rights and Public Service Delivery in Senegal
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0017796
Initial registration date
February 19, 2026

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
February 24, 2026, 6:24 AM EST

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

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Primary Investigator

Affiliation
World Bank

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
Rice University
PI Affiliation
Princeton University
PI Affiliation
World Bank

Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2024-10-01
End date
2030-10-01
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
This study evaluates an intervention implemented during Senegal’s new systematic land registration program to increase the share of plots registered under adolescent girls’ names. As in much of Sub-Saharan Africa, customary norms may shape land-related decisions in ways that limit gender parity in land rights. Before deployment, a randomly selected subset of land surveyors received training on women’s and girls' land rights. They were also offered a performance-based incentive based on the percentage of plots registered under girls’ names—calculated among a randomly selected subset of households—within their assigned communes (the unit of program implementation). We examine the intervention’s impacts on households’ registration decisions and, in a second stage, on intrahousehold dynamics and outcomes.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Calvi, Rossella et al. 2026. "Gender Equality, Land Rights and Public Service Delivery in Senegal." AEA RCT Registry. February 24. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.17796-1.0
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
The intervention has two components. The first component is a three-day, group-based in-person training to increase surveyors’ understanding of and commitment to women’s and girls’ land rights and outline how to discuss these issues with households during registration. The curriculum covers five modules—women’s land rights, access to land for women and girls, gender stereotypes, reasons to include daughters on a land title, and the role of the land surveyor—and uses short presentations, group discussions, quizzes, and role-playing exercises. The second component is performance-based rewards. Using a predetermined list of households within each surveyor’s assigned communes to evaluate performance, prizes are awarded to those achieving the highest share of plots registered under adolescent girls’ names in this list.
Intervention Start Date
2024-11-04
Intervention End Date
2025-12-19

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
• Number of plots registered with an adolescent girl’s name
• Number of plots registered with a female name
• Downstream impacts on intrahousehold dynamics and outcomes
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
The sample comprises 89 rural communes selected to receive the land registration program. Within each commune, two to five villages were sampled, yielding 295 villages overall. The 89 communes (and their 295 sampled villages) were randomly assigned to treatment (45 communes, 151 villages) or control (44 communes, 144 villages), with randomization stratified by department. Treatment communes were paired with treated land surveyors, and control communes with control surveyors.

Within each village, a household listing was used to identify eligible households—those that (i) owned at least one plot of land and (ii) had a daughter aged 13–18 living in the household—and eligible households were then randomly sampled. In total, 2,435 households were selected from villages in treatment communes and 1,487 from those in control communes. The 2,435 households in treatment communes were further randomly assigned, stratified by village, into two groups: 1,435 rewards households, whose titles counted toward surveyors’ performance evaluation, and 1,000 non-rewards households.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
Randomization done in office by a computer
Randomization Unit
Cluster (communes) and individual (households within communes)
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
89 communes
Sample size: planned number of observations
~4,000 households
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
45 communes (151 villages, 2,435 households) in treatment group; 44 communes (144 villages, 1,487 households) in control group
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Health Media Lab
IRB Approval Date
2024-08-13
IRB Approval Number
2628
Analysis Plan

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