Who has secure land tenure in the urban areas of Brazil? Evidence from the state of Minas Gerais

By using data from a sample survey of 18,000 households in the state of Minas Gerais that collected, for the first time in Brazil, very specific information on home ownership in urban areas, we have investigated how distinct conditions of secure/insecure land tenure are related to household, housing and city characteristics inside and outside slum areas. Using binomial logistic and maximum entropy models, we have identified who is more likely to have insecure tenure due to untitled land or unregistered deeds vis-à-vis secure tenure according to income, education, residency time, marital status, household size, housing size, public services provision and quality of public space. Our results show how differently these features are associated with diverse conditions of insecure tenure in slum areas and outside of them, sometimes even presenting unexpectedly opposite behaviour that reveals the complexity of property rights issues. Moreover, insecure land tenure in places apart from slums is also highly prevalent and present in almost all the state’s urban areas. This scenario is probably the same in the whole country.