Does reinforcing spouses’ land rights improve children’s outcomes? Evidence from a quasi-natural experiment in rural Vietnam

The aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship between laws strengthening women’s rights, and children’s outcomes, namely child labor and educational attainment. We analyze the effects of a land reform introduced in Vietnam in 2003 that had the objective of reinforcing women’s land rights within households. The introduction of the 2003 Land Law represents a quasi-natural experiment which allows us to analyze how legal reforms are transformed and adopted by social norms. We investigate the effects of being part of the population of households targeted by the land law with the help of a household survey that permits detailed investigation of property rights at the plot level. We show that the land reform contributed to reducing girls’ participation in household agricultural production and to increasing girls’ educational attainment. We do not find comparable effects for boys.Child labor, education, land rights, gender, land reform, Vietnam.

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addresses political, economic and ecological development problems. ZEF closely cooperates with national and international partners in research and development organizations. For information, see: www.zef.de. ZEF – Discussion Papers on Development Policy are intended to stimulate discussion among researchers, practitioners and policy makers on current and emerging development issues. Each paper has been exposed to an internal discussion within the Center for Development Research (ZEF) and an external review. The papers mostly reflect work in progress. The Editorial Committee of the ZEF – DISCUSSION PAPERS ON DEVELOPMENT POLICY include Joachim von Braun (Chair), Solvey Gerke, and Manfred Denich. Tobias Wünscher is Managin

Ethnicity, Marriage and Family Income

This study adds a microeconomic perspective to the discussion on ethnic diversity and economic performance in developing countries by investigating the motivation for intra-ethnicity marriage in rural Sub-Saharan Africa. Specifically, the paper proposes that ethnic similarity between spouses enhances economic outcomes through a shared agricultural production technology. Furthermore, the framework suggests that the probability of marriage within the same ethnic group is positively related to the size of the group due to frictions in the marriage market: Search costs for co-ethnic spouses are larger the smaller the group. The theoretical propositions are supported using Ethiopian rural household data by demonstrating that inter-ethnicity marriage of the household head has adverse implications for family income. The negative effect is robust to controlling for lagged income and initial conditions, present when investigating the link with changes in family wealth, and persists in additional sensitivity checks

The Impact of Shocks on Gender-differentiated Asset Dynamics in Bangladesh

Assets are an important means of coping with adverse events in developing countries but the role of gendered ownership is not yet fully understood. This paper investigates changes in assets owned by the household head,his spouse,or jointly by both of them in response to shocks in rural agricultural households in Bangladesh with the help of detailed household survey panel data. Land is owned mostly by men,who are wealthier than their spouses with respect to almost all types of assets,but relative ownership varies by type of asset. Controlling for unobserved heterogeneity across households and looking at changes within,rather than between,households,we find that weather shocks such as cyclones adversely affect the asset holdings of household heads in general,while predicted external events lead to assets of both spouses being drawn down. The results,furthermore,suggest that jointly owned assets are not sold in response to shocks,either due to these assets being actively protected or due to the difficulty of agreeing on this coping strategy,and that women’s asset holdings and associated coping strategies are shaped by their lower involvement in agriculture

Smallholder Participation in the Commercialisation of Vegetables: Evidence from Kenyan Panel Data

This paper describes the participation of smallholders in commercial horticultural farming in Kenya and identifies constraints and critical factors that influence their decision to participate in this industry by selling their produce. The study employs panel survey data on smallholder producers of both international (export) and domestic market vegetables and controls for unobserved heterogeneity across farmers. We find that participation of smallholders in both the domestic and export vegetable markets declined and that this trend is associated with weather risks, high costs of inputs and unskilled labour, and erratic vegetable prices, especially in the international market. Different factors are at play in determining a household’s market choice for the commercialisation of vegetables: credit is important only when vegetables are (also) exported, livestock ownership is negatively related to production for the domestic market, and distance to the nearest market town positively related to all pathways of commercialisation, for example

On the train to brain gain in rural China

This study investigates the well-researched relationship between migration and the formation of human capital in the source region using a novel instrument: the existence of a local train station. We make use of Chinese panel data and of the fact that the decision to build a new train station is taken by the central government and unrelated to characteristics of a rural village receiving the station. As an intermediate result we find that train stations are negatively related to migration outflows, thus indicating that the facilitation of local employment through economic integration outweighs the reduction of migratory costs. Investigating variation within villages over time in the instrumental variables approach for the central research question, we see a positive effect of out-migration on educational attainment in the source region. Additional results suggest that the effect is stronger for male and young stayers

Welfare Effects of Vegetable Commercialization: Evidence from Smallholder Producers in Kenya

We investigate the impact of smallholder vegetable commercialization through the export and domestic market channels on household income and assets in Kenya. We use a survey panel dataset, which allows us to control for unobserved heterogeneity across households, and show that the commercialization of vegetables through both market channels contributes positively to welfare, even when addressing the issue of selection into commercialization. While the production of vegetables for the export market is consistently associated with income in a positive way, the results for asset holdings as the measure of household welfare are weaker and supportive only for the domestic market channel, which weakens the notion of smallholder commercialization being a “pro-poor” strategy