Economic development in low income settings is often associated with an expansion of higher-value agricultural activities. Since these activities often bring new risks, an understanding of cropland decisions and how these interact with shocks is...
Land and wealth are closely related in rural Brazil, a country characterized by high levels of inequality in terms of income or landholdings. After presenting a historical retrospective of land concentration and land reform in Brazil, this study...
We use data on inter-generational gains in educational attainment by some 500,000 individuals in 200 West Bengal villages to explore gender-differentiated impacts of land reform on human capital accumulation at the individual level. While there are...
Although recent developments greatly increased interest in African land tenure, few models to address these issues at the required scale have been identified or evaluated. Rwanda’s nation-wide land tenure regularization programme is of great interest...
Using original survey data on Senegal that include an individualized measure of consumption, we study the role played by land inheritance, other bequests and parental background as influences on an adult’s economic welfare and economic activities...
In this study an attempt has been made to assess the potential of land as a municipal financing tool in four Indian cities, to enable better public service delivery and attainment of the MDGs. The institutional arrangements for land use are...
We examine how village-level social group dominance affects the educational and occupational mobility of minority and other social groups in rural India across multiple generations. We distinguish between upper caste and own-group dominance and...
This special issue of the Journal of Development Economics originates from a UNU-WIDER research project on land inequality and decentralized governance in LDCs. The research began in late 2010 with Dilip Mookherjee and Pranab Bardhan jointly...
The objective of this research and policy brief is to analyse different mechanisms of access to land for the rural poor in an era when redistribution through expropriative land reform is largely inconsistent with the forces of the political economy...
One reason for unsatisfactory public service delivery in Indian cities is that city finances are in poor condition. Recent research shows that given the fragmented institutional arrangements for land in India's cities, there is a case for...
By applying a unified framework, this book examines the impact of land tenure reforms on poverty reduction and natural resource management in countries in Africa and Asia with highly diverse historical contexts. These land tenure reforms include Land...
Part of Journal Special Issue Economics of climate change impacts on developing countries
Land tenure arrangements in Africa are generally skewed in favour of males. Compared to males, female plot owners face complex sets of constraints and systemic high tenure insecurity which culminate in low yields. In order to obtain better returns...
At our 30th Anniversary Conference we took the chance to interview Martin Ravallion of Georgetown University—we asked him to discuss his recent work...
The paper finds that a new system of social stratification is emerging in rural China in the wake of economic reforms, one that is far less equal than what preceded it. As part of this trend, wealth inequality has increased markedly in a short period...
With the overthrow of the Derg in 1991, some 500,000 ex-soldiers needed to be demobilized and reintegrated back into their communities. Successfully integrating such a large number of ex-soldiers is clearly important to social stability. While...
Part of Journal Special Issue Aid for Gender Equality and Development
While unequal land ownership has a role to play in explaining historically high levels of income inequality, this paper asks what role agrarian structure plays in explaining contemporary trends of increasing income inequality. Using a Gini...
In this paper we study the impact of tenure security on rural to urban migration of household members over the age of 15. Using three waves of the Tanzanian National Panel Survey (NPS) data, we show that tenure security is associated with lower...
This paper uses panel data at commune, household, and plot levels to study the causes and effects of agricultural land fragmentation in rural Vietnam. We focus on both inter-farm fragmentation (the division of land into many small farms) and intra...
This paper studies the relationship between land tenure for smallholder agriculture and deforestation in Vietnam. We combine high resolution satellite data on deforestation with rich household and commune-level, biannual panel data. We study two...
From the book: Oxford Handbook of Africa and Economics, Vol. 2.
Tony Addison As autumn moves into winter in Helsinki, it is time to bring you the October edition of UNU-WIDER’s newsletter, WIDER Angle. Regular...
Due to increasing population pressure on limited cultivable land in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), farm size has been shrinking, fallow periods have been shortened, and soil fertility has been declining. In accordance with the Boserupian...
Studies of land property rights usually focus on tenure security and transfer rights. Rights to determine how to use the land are regularly ignored. However, user rights are often limited. Relying on a unique Vietnamese panel data set at both...
In the preceding pages we have attempted a detailed rebuttal of the view that, given the prevailing structural constraints imposed by the unequal distribution of land and other assets, growth through Green Revolution must impoverish, or at best by...
Customary rules governing access to land and other natural resources in village societies have characteristics that allow them to fulfill social security functions and achieve equity objectives. This is true of both common-property resources and land...
While land reforms have long been motivated as a potential policy lever of rural growth and development, there is remarkably little evidence of the direct impacts of such reforms. In an effort to fill this lacunae, this paper examines South Africa's...
Since 1999, China has spent RMB 50 billion (about US$7 billion) to implement the ‘Grain for Green’ programme, the largest land retirement programme in the developing world. From 1999 to 2003, over 7.2 million hectares of agricultural land were...
Most theoretical approaches to inheritance assume that parents are the key actors of bequest decisions. However, in a context of important migration, children may play an active role in the inheritance process. Based on a unique data set collected at...
This paper reviews the principal source of India’s wealth distribution statistics, which is constituted by the five decennial Reserve Bank of India National Sample Survey Organization Surveys on Debt and Investment of 1961-62, 1971-72, 1981-82, 1991...
Part of Book Access to Land, Rural Poverty, and Public Action
Land is a fundamental productive asset in agrarian economies. The rules that codify access to land and the way jurisdiction over land is distributed among members of a community have a powerful influence over how efficiently land is used, the...
Part of Journal Special Issue Globalization-Poverty Channels and Case Studies from Sub-Saharan Africa
Part of Book From Conflict to Recovery in Africa
Part of Journal Special Issue Understanding agricultural development and change
Does the existence of formal title to land and real estate matter for the distribution of wealth? This paper reviews the empirical literature on the economic impact of land and real estate administration systems across countries. This paper argues...
This paper analyses the land tenure reform that took place in Mexico in 1992 and its PROCEDE programme (Ejido Rights Certification Programme). It considers the counter-agrarian reform’s objectives, the context in which it was proposed, and the...
We study the effects of titles on parcel valuation and urban land market development (real estate transfers, rentals, and mortgages), and the dynamics of deregularization by exploiting a natural experiment in the allocation of land titles to very...
This paper examines land tenure in informal urban settlements in India from a gender perspective through field research conducted in Ahmedabad in collaboration with the Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA). The author describes the formal and...
This paper uses household panel data from rural Vietnam to explore the effects of having a relative in a position of political or bureaucratic power on farmers’ agricultural investment decisions. Our main result is that households significantly...
The Mexican land reform, one of the most sweeping in the world, proceeded in two steps: it granted peasants highly incomplete property rights on more than half of the Mexican territory starting in 1914, creating strong economic and political...
This paper addresses the question of how farmers displaced by acquisition of agricultural land for the purpose of industrialization ought to be compensated. Prior to acquisition, the farmers are leasing in land from a landlord, either a private owner...
This paper uses data from a household survey to estimate changes in land distribution in rural West Bengal between 1967-2004 and decompose these into contributions of different factors. There was a substantial drop in land per household and land per...
If we understand well the individualization of land tenure rules under conditions of growing land scarcity and increased market integration, much less is known about the mode of evolution of the farm-cum-family units possessing the land. Inspired by...
Tree crops have changed land tenure in Africa. Farmers have acquired more permanent, alienable rights, but have also faced disputes with competing claimants and the state. I show that the introduction of Para rubber had similar effects in the Benin...
This paper illustrates how, in relation to globalization, formal and informal land institutions are prone to generate conflict over land rights and examines the implications of such conflicts on security levels of access to primary assets for the...
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