Tenure security is widely believed to contribute to low-income settlement development by encouraging investment in housing improvement. However, in spite of consensus about its importance, it is still unclear what tenure security exactly entails and few studies have examined how it relates to housing improvement. Using survey data from six informal neighborhoods in Buenos Aires, Argentina, we empirically test a model that specifies how the different types of tenure security that feature in academic and policy debates relate to each other, and the extent to which each predicts investment in housing improvement. We find that legal tenure security and de facto security of tenure influence investment in part through increases in perceptions of tenure security. We conclude that the hypothesized model accurately predicts investment in housing improvement and discuss how these findings inform current debates on tenure security and informality.
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