No abstract

Secure property rights are considered a key determinant of economic development. However, the evaluation of the causal e¤ects of land titling is a di¢ cult task. The Brazilian government through a program called "Papel Passado" has issued titles, since 2004, to over 85,000 families and has the goal to reach 750,000. Furthermore, another topic in Public Policy, that is crucial for developing economies, is child labor force participation. Particularly, in Brazil, about 5.4 million children and teenagers between 5 and 17 years old are still working full time. This paper examines the direct impact of securing a property title on child labor force participation. In order to isolate the causal role of ownership security, this study uses a comparison between two close and very similar communities in the City of Osasco case (a town with 650,000 people in the São Paulo metropolitan area). The key point of this case is that some units get the program and others do not. One of them, Jardim Canaã, was fortunate to receive the titles in 2007, the other, Jardim DR, given …scal constraints, only will be part of the program schedule in 2012, and for that reason became the control group. The estimates, generated using Di¤erence-in-Di¤erence (DD) econometric technique, suggest that titling results in a substantial decrease of child labor force participation for the families that received the title compared to the others. Such remarks can provide a relevant subsidize regarding future public tools to approach informality and a¤ect economic growth.