Distributional Outcomes of Land Inequality in Tanzania is Recent Subject of Publication by Brown & Colleagues
Posted: 9/28/2023 (CSDE Research)
CSDE Affiliate Dan Brown (College of the Environment) recently published a co-authored article in PNAS, titled “Large-scale land acquisitions exacerbate local farmland inequalities in Tanzania”. Land inequality stalls economic development, entrenches poverty, and is associated with environmental degradation. The authors’ paper studies inequalities in land assets, specifically landholdings and farm size, to derive insights into the distributional outcomes of LSLAs. Using a household survey covering four pairs of land acquisition and control sites in Tanzania, they use a quasi-experimental design to characterize changes in land inequality and subsequent impacts on well-being. Their results demonstrate that without explicit consideration of distributional outcomes, land-use policies can systematically reinforce existing inequalities.