Prindex, the Global Property Rights Index, is a collaborative initiative between Global Land Alliance and ODI to develop and implement the first global measurement of peoples’ perceptions of their property rights. Prindex has established the first ever global and national-level baseline of perceptions of land tenure security. This baseline will provide the grounding for a global conversation and movement around securing the property rights of billions who currently lack them.
Around the world, insecure property rights prevent families from feeling confident about the future, businesses from investing, and communities from becoming more productive. Hundreds of millions of us lack property security. This makes the world poorer, less free, and less just. There is a growing recognition of the need for change, but without accurate information, governments, business and civil society can’t understand the nature of the challenge or how to overcome it. Prindex will provide that information, and make possible the changes that will bring about more secure, productive and dignified societies.
What is PRindex?
Prindex stands for the Global Property Rights Index, an indicator of citizens' perception of the security of property rights. The Prindex database is open. The dataset is intended to monitor and encourage good governance of property rights. Data on perceptions of security of property rights are required to monitor the Sustainable Development Goals and the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Forests and Fisheries.
Who is involved?
Prindex is a collaboration being implemented by Global Land Alliance and the Overseas Development Institute, and an initiative of the Omidyar Network and the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), in association with Gallup and other partners. A Technical Advisory Group (TAG) of research experts in property rights is providing guidance on the design and methodology of surveys and analysis of data.
Why does Prindex matter for development?
Property rights are a cornerstone of economic development and social justice. Perceptions of security of tenure have never been collected at the global level, preventing a clear understanding of the magnitude and nature of citizens' experience of security and insecurity. Prindex addresses this gap, creating a baseline global dataset to support the achievement of secure property rights around the world.
Exposing the global land and housing crisis
Our research finds that almost 1 billion people fear eviction worldwide. This hidden land and housing crisis is holding back development and women’s empowerment and driving conflict and climate change.
For most of us, land is more than a commodity; it is tied to our cultural heritage and identity. Our homes offer more than just shelter, they’re key to our sense of dignity and wellbeing.
Strengthening land and housing rights can safeguard the vulnerable and help us build a fairer, greener more prosperous world. To do this, we need better data to understand who is at risk of losing their rights and how we can defend them.
Our groundbreaking global survey helps meet this need for data by listening to all people – including often excluded groups. For the first time, we have a global measure of land rights and a clearer understanding of the scale of the problem.
WHAT WE DO
Evidence & analysis
providing fully comparable open-source data on perceptions of tenure security at the global and local level
conducting policy-relevant research and offering monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) services
Global outreach
communicating our findings, influencing policy, and raising awareness of the urgent need for action
building regional networks in Asia-Pacific, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, MENA and sub-Saharan Africa
Collaboration & partnerships
working with partners like the International Land Coalition and Land Portal to highlight the importance of tenure security
sharing our data with likeminded organizations to promote change, such as the global land governance index LANDex
Our global dataset measures perceptions of property security in 141 countries, accounting for an estimated 95 percent of the world’s population.
We survey perceptions of a representative sample of citizens, not only heads of household, to ensure the voices of women and young people are heard in the development and land rights conversation.
REGIONAL EXPERTISE
In addition to our global data, we conduct in-depth studies within a country to better understand what’s happening in a specific location or to specific communities. Our analysis also seeks to expose how land rights impact other areas of development, including violent conflict, climate change and gender equality.
See some of our regional data launches from 2020 and 2021 here:
MENA Regional Data Launch
Sub-Saharan Africa Regional Data Launch
East Asia and Pacific Regional Data Launch
Latin America and Caribbean Regional Data Launch
Fundamental Right, Insufficient Data:
Secure property rights are fundamental to a host of food security, governance, financial inclusion, climate change, and health outcomes. Despite the importance of property rights, we don’t actually know how many people feel they lack secure, equitable access to land and housing and where these problems are concentrated. Nor do we have a global measure of tenure insecurity, despite the fact that SDG indicator 1.4.2 must track this.
Prindex Global Scale-Up:
Prindex will provide governments, businesses, and civil society with a global baseline, measured every 2-3 years, to evaluate domestic and global levels of land tenure security. These data provide a basis for developing policies, programs, and business models to provide secure property rights to billions of people, and to track the effectiveness of these policies and programs. Prindex can also play a role in measuring the place of SDG land indicator 1.4.2 by providing data on perceptions of tenure security.
An initial phase of development of the index and testing its application was carried out in ten countries during 2016 and 2017. After the development phase, the index was globalized collections in 2018. In 2019, with data added to the Gallup World Poll, Prindex expanded to a total of 141 countries worldwide. In July of 2020, Prindex released comparative results from its data collection and found that almost 1 billion people worldwide feel that they are vulnerable to losing their house or property over the next five years