Access to Land in Rural India

Mearns, Robin

doi:10.1596/1813-9450-2123

Cited by 68 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…It has been argued that, historically, productivity losses from land fragmentation have been modest, benefits due to risk diversification substantial (Heston and Kumar 1983), and impacts of efforts at land consolidation undertaken by some states at various times during the postindependence period (Mearns 1999) short-lived as high population would soon let fragmented holding reemerge after consolidation efforts. If there is net migration out of the agricultural sector, fragmentation can lead to serious constraints.…”

Section: Conceptual Issues and Measurementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does Land Fragmentation Increase the Cost of Cultivation? Evidence from India

Deininger¹,

Monchuk²,

Nagarajan³

et al. 2014

Policy Research Working Papers

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Although a large literature discusses the productivity effects of land fragmentation, measurement and potential endogeneity issues are often overlooked. This paper uses several measures of fragmentation and controls for endogeneity and crop choice by looking at inherited paddy and wheat plots to show that these issues matter empirically. While crop choice can mitigate effects, fragmentation as measured by the Simpson index increases production cost and fosters substitution of labor for machinery, especially for small and medium farmers. Greater distances between fragments have a smaller effect. Creating opportunities for market-based consolidation could be one step to limit fragmentation-induced cost increases.

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Section: Conceptual Issues and Measurementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does Land Fragmentation Increase the Cost of Cultivation? Evidence from India

Deininger¹,

Monchuk²,

Nagarajan³

et al. 2014

Policy Research Working Papers

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show abstract

“…Reforms had three main elements (Mearns 1999), namely (i) abolition of intermediaries (zamindars) shortly after independence; (ii) tenancy laws to increase tenure security by sitting tenants by registering them and often imposing restrictions on the amount of rent they had to pay or the scope for new rental transactions; 4 (iii) ceiling laws that provided a basis for expropriating land held by any given owner in excess of a state-specific ceiling and subsequently transferring it to poor farmers or landless agricultural workers. While the first of these is considered to have been highly successful, progress on the remainder was initially very slow, accelerating only during the 1970s and slowing down again in the 1980s.…”

Section: Land Reform Implementation In Indiamentioning

confidence: 99%

Land Reforms, Poverty Reduction, And Economic Growth : Evidence From India

Deininger

Nagarajan

2008

Policy Research Working Papers

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“…As a result of such "patrilocality" or "virilocality", women are considered members only of their family of marriage. Consequently, they have no inheritance rights in their parents' family, neither in law nor in practice since any land given to them would be lost to the family lineage (Agarwal 1998;Mearns 1999;Singh 2005). Botticini and Siow (2003) show why in patrilocal societies, the family head prefers to leave a bequest of illiquid land only to his sons.…”

Section: Rural Family Structurementioning

confidence: 99%

Where There is a Will: Fertility Behavior and Sex Bias in Large Families

Jain

2011

SSRN Journal

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Boys and girls in India experience large differences in survival and health outcomes. For example, the 2001 Census reports that the sex ratio for children under six years of age is 927 girls per thousand boys, an outcome that has been attributed to differences in parents' behavior towards their sons and daughters. Most studies rely primarily on cultural factors or biases in economic returns to explain these differences. In this paper, I propose an explanation where bequest motives drive fertility behavior that generates sex-based differences in outcomes even when parents do not explicitly prefer boys over girls. In India's patrilocal rural society, women do not inherit property and heads of joint families aim to retain assets within the family lineage for future generations. I hypothesize that this leads heads to bequeath more land to claimants with more sons, in turn generating a race for sons among adult brothers seeking to maximize their inheritance of agricultural land. I confirm this theoretical prediction using panel data from rural households in India. This strategic fertility behavior implies that girls have systematically more siblings compared to boys, and hence receive smaller shares of household resources, offering an explanation for sex-based differences in outcomes.

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Access to Land in Rural India

Cited by 68 publications

References 35 publications

Does Land Fragmentation Increase the Cost of Cultivation? Evidence from India

Does Land Fragmentation Increase the Cost of Cultivation? Evidence from India

Land Reforms, Poverty Reduction, And Economic Growth : Evidence From India

Where There is a Will: Fertility Behavior and Sex Bias in Large Families

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