Delinking Land Rights from Land Use: Certification and Migration in Mexico

In many developing countries property rights over rural land are maintained through continuous personal use instead of by land titles. We show that removing the link between land use and land rights through the issuance of ownership certificates can result in large-scale adjustments to labor and lan...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The American economic review Vol. 105; no. 10; pp. 3125 - 3149
Main Authors: de Janvry, Alain, Emerick, Kyle, Gonzalez-Navarro, Marco, Sadoulet, Elisabeth
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Nashville American Economic Association 01.10.2015
Subjects:
Agrarian reform
Agricultural land
Agricultural land use
Agriculture
Certificates
Certification
Community
Crop economics
Crops
Datasets
Developing countries
Economic development
Farms
Households
Labor migration
Land economics
Land settlement
Land titles
Land use
LDCs
Mexico
Migrants
Migration
Ownership
Population
Property rights
Rentals
Rural areas
Rural communities
Rural land use
Studies
Value added
Mexico
ISSN:0002-8282, 1944-7981
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:In many developing countries property rights over rural land are maintained through continuous personal use instead of by land titles. We show that removing the link between land use and land rights through the issuance of ownership certificates can result in large-scale adjustments to labor and land allocations. Using the rollout of the Mexican land certification program from 1993 to 2006, we find that households obtaining certificates were subsequently 28 percent more likely to have a migrant member. We also show that even though land certification induced migration, it had little effect on cultivated area due to consolidation of farm units.
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ISSN:0002-8282
1944-7981
DOI:10.1257/aer.20130853