Vietnam’s 1993 Land Law created a land market by granting households land-use
rights which could be exchanged, leased, inherited, sold or mortgaged. This study analyzes
whether increased land titling led to discernible improvements in women’s economic security,
and whether effects were more pronounced in households where land rights were jointly
registered by husbands and wives. Using a matched sample of households from Vietnam’s 2004
and 2008 Household Living Standards Survey, we find that jointly-held land rights increase the
proportion of women self-employed in agriculture, reduce the proportion of women engaged in
housework, and improve women’s educational attainment in the household. Jointly-held rights
are also found to reduce the incidence of general poverty. Female-only held land-use rights are
particularly beneficial to reducing food poverty in male-headed households. This research
highlights new evidence on how measures of women’s economic security and household
vulnerability are influenced by the creation of a marketable asset in a developing country.