Land Reform and Human Capital Development: Evidence from India

• In Event: Poverty and Environmental Inequity: Land, Heat, and Energy

Abstract

       Persistent land inequality in the Global South has been associated with adverse long-term development outcomes.  One key channel underpinning the relationship is human capital development. Historically, landowners have underinvested in the public education system, limiting access to schooling for land-poor and landless laborers and their children. This has resulted in chronically low levels of investment in human capital. Land redistribution policies, therefore, have the potential to improve human capital outcomes.

        Taking the case of “lower caste” rural Dalits in India, the largest landless population (~ 120 million) in a single country, this paper asks: What is the impact of land reform on human capital development in terms of educational attainment? Drawing on novel village-level land reform data from the 2006 wave of the Agriculture Rural Income Survey / Rural Economic & Demographic Survey (ARIS/REDS), conducted by India’s National Council of Applied Economic Research, we employ an event-study difference-in-differences (DiD) methodology. Preliminary findings suggest that exposure to land reform is associated with a negative impact on educational attainment, as measured by years of schooling completed. We explore several mechanisms to understand this counterintuitive result, including migration patterns, child labor, household income changes, and gender- and caste-based disparities.

        Our provisional findings underscore that land reform alone does not guarantee improvements in human capital. Rather than undermining the value of land reform, these results highlight the critical need for complementary interventions, such as secure land titling, improved land management practices, access to quality rural education, and targeted policies to address gender and caste inequalities. This paper contributes to the inconclusive global literature on land reform and human capital development—spanning cases in Peru, Italy, China, and India—by focusing on the unique context of rural Dalits and utilizing advanced causal inference techniques.

Author

• Vishal Jamkar, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities
  Presenting Author