Land policies are of fundamental importance to sustainable growth, good governance, and the well-being of, and the economic opportunities open to, both rural and urban dwellers - particularly the poor. To this end, research on land policy, and analysis of interventions related to the subject, have long been of interest to the Bank's Research Department, and other academic, and civil society institutions. The report aims to strengthen the effectiveness of land policy in support of development, and poverty reduction, by setting out the results of recent research in a way that is accessible to a wide audience of policymakers, nongovernmental organizations, academics in the Bank's client countries, donor agency officials, and the broader development community. Its main message rests on three principles: 1) provision of secure tenure to land improves the welfare of the poor, particularly by enhancing the asset base of those whose land rights are often neglected, and, creates incentives needed for investment, paramount to sustainable economic growth; 2) facilitation of land exchange, and distribution, whether as an asset or for current services, at low cost, through markets, and non-market channels, will expedite land access by productive, but land-poor producers, so that once economic growth improves, financial markets would rely on the use of land as collateral; and, 3) governments' contribution to the promotion of socially desirable land allocation, and utilization. The report discusses mechanisms to promote tenure security, demonstrates the importance of rental market transactions, arguing the removal of impediments to these can generate equity advantages, and positive investments. It also illustrates mechanisms, ranging from taxation, to regulation and land use planning to address these issues.

Land policies for growth and poverty reduction

https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:269327e6-9d28-43f2-b264-6b9828e09152/download_file?safe_filename=migration_poverty.pdf&file_format=application%2Fpdf&type_of_work=Journal+article

Migration and rural poverty in China

Women, policy and politics. The construction of policy problems

This article addresses the issue of knowing when one has researched enough – thoroughly, and without missing anything. The author argues that there is not a magic number for the “appropriate” amount of cases. The author further explains using the image of a dartboard, one labeled as “Authority” and the other labeled as “Issues,” as a means of evaluating criteria.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID1954774_code1063101.pdf?abstractid=1954774&mirid=5&type=2

How Many Cases Do I Need

This paper attempts to identify and assess some of the key elements that ‘frame’ food sovereignty (FS): (1) a comprehensive attack on corporate industrialised agriculture, and its ecological consequences, in the current moment of globalisation, (2) advocacy of a (the) ‘peasant way’ as the basis of a sustainable and socially just food system, and (3) a programme to realise that world-historical goal. While sharing some of the concerns of (1), I am sceptical about (2) because of how FS conceives ‘peasants’, and the claim of some of its leading advocates that small producers who practice agroecological farming – understood as low (external)-input and labour-intensive – can feed the world. This connects with an argument that FS is incapable of constructing a feasible programme (3) to connect the activities of small farmers with the food needs of non-farmers, whose numbers are growing both absolutely and as a proportion of the world's population.

/pdf/food-sovereignty-via-the-peasant-way-a-sceptical-view-1mklhq10l3.pdf

Food sovereignty via the ‘peasant way’: a sceptical view

Introduction 1. Values, goals and resources 2. China, Jiangxi and the fieldwork counties 3. Resource redistribution and inequality 4. Migration, remittances and goals 5. Recruiting returnees to build enterprises and towns 6. The enterprises and the entrepreneurs 7. Entrepreneurs, socio-economic change, and interactions with the state 8. Returning home with heavy hearts and empty pockets Conclusion.

/pdf/how-migrant-labor-is-changing-rural-china-3moobj9ekp.pdf

How Migrant Labor Is Changing Rural China

The all-embracing discourse of population quality (suzhi) is put to work through rural primary schools in ways that help state institutions implement policies such as accelerating demographic transition, restructuring the education system, professionalizing labour markets, promoting agricultural skills training, instituting economic liberalism and carrying out patriotic education. Suzhi discourse facilitates policy implementation in four ways. First, it imbues disparate policies with seeming coherence. Secondly, by articulating a diverse set of policies through suzhi discourse, including state retreat from welfare provisioning, state institutions can be seen to be working to improve people's well-being. Thirdly, in making people responsible for raising their own quality, the need to improve suzhi is an explanation and a prescription when individuals are adversely affected by policies. Finally, suzhi discourse encourages individuals to regulate their conduct in accordance with the political drift of society. By enfolding suzhi norms into identity formation, the education system shapes each individual's ongoing process of “becoming” in ways that parallel the nation's modernization, thereby reducing the costs of policy enforcement.

Turning Peasants into Modern Chinese Citizens:"Population Quality" Discourse, Demographic Transition and Primary Education

This essay draws on an original cross-sectional survey of 1,010 children and their guardians in highly migratory regions of Anhui and Jiangxi provinces located in China's interior. It uses propensity score matching, a technique that mitigates endogenity, to examine the impact of parental migration and post-migration guardianship arrangements on the children's educational performance as measured by test scores for Chinese and mathematics. One core finding is that the educational performance of children is adversely affected by parental migration only when both parents migrate or when a non-parent guardian is the principal carer. Additionally, longer durations of parental absence are associated with poorer educational performance. The migration of two parents only significantly adversely affects the educational performance of boys. There is no significant effect on the educational performance of girls. On the basis of our findings we argue that rather than support left-behind children within the countryside, the long-term policy response should be to remove the institutional obstacles that prevent family resettlement in the cities.

Effects of Parents' Migration on the Education of Children Left Behind in Rural China

This article draws on a survey conducted in six provinces in summer 2008 to investigate the determinants of son preference in rural China. The analysis confirms the conventional wisdom that son preference is embedded within patrilineal family structures and practices. We extend our analysis by exploring specific aspects of variation within patrilineal family culture. We find that the patrilineal group (clan) composition of villages and family participation in practices such as building ancestral halls and updating genealogies significantly influence son preference. Yet even though son preference is embedded within patrilineal family culture our analysis suggests that over time the attenuation of son preference is likely. This is because determinants associated with socioeconomic change-for instance higher levels of education direct exposure to official policy education materials higher income (a proxy for rural industrialization) and agricultural mechanization-all attenuate son preference. Being younger and female are also associated with weaker son preference and both characteristics are likely to interact with education and industrialization to further dilute son preference in the longer term. Nevertheless our findings suggest that concerted efforts are needed to ameliorate institutional discrimination against rural people in welfare provisioning and in labor markets and to promote multiple dimensions of gender equality including in land rights wage rates and education.

Son preference in rural China: patrilineal families and socioeconomic change.

An Erratum for this article has been published in Journal of International Development 12(2) 2000, 297.



Returnee migrants in the counties of Xinfeng and Yudu, south Jiangxi, are contributing to the diversification of the rural economy in their natal communities. This is occurring with the sponsorship of the state which views returnee entrepreneurship as part of the longer-term project of permanently transferring rural labour from villages to towns, and from fields to off-farm employment. Returnees have assisted the immediate goal of diversifying the rural economy, and they have lobbied the local state for changes which make the natal environment more conducive to business. However, owing to the backwardness of the natal economies and the short history of return to south Jiangxi, these entrepreneurs are not advancing the longer-term project of permanently transferring rural labour out of agriculture and villages. Moreover, although returnee enterprises are promoting economic diversification, their contribution to livelihood diversification has been limited to creating jobs for other returnees, rather than for the local non-migrant population. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Rachel Murphy

Papers

How Migrant Labor Is Changing Rural China

Turning Peasants into Modern Chinese Citizens:"Population Quality" Discourse, Demographic Transition and Primary Education

Effects of Parents' Migration on the Education of Children Left Behind in Rural China

Son preference in rural China: patrilineal families and socioeconomic change.

Return migrant entrepreneurs and economic diversification in two counties in south Jiangxi, China