POVERTY AND LAND POLICY IN CAMBODIA

Anders Engvall and Ari Kokko

No 233, EIJS Working Paper Series from Stockholm School of Economics, The European Institute of Japanese Studies

Abstract: Slow agricultural development has restrained economic growth and poverty alleviation in Cambodia. The country's volatile history has left a legacy of weak tenure security and large areas of underutilized land. This study estimates the impact of access to land on poverty in a logistic regression framework using household survey data. Increased access to land is shown to significantly lower the risk of household poverty. Tenure security, land improvements and irrigation strengthens this effect. Simulations of the potential impact of a land reform package predicts a 16 percentage points fall in poverty incidence among landowning rural households and a 30-point fall when targeting the landless. The analysis suggests that improved tenure security should be at the top of the policy agenda. Given political and economic constraints, implementation of reforms remains a key challenge.

Keywords: Cambodia; Economic Development; Poverty; Property Rights; Land Reform (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I32 O12 O53 Q12 Q15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29 pages
Date: 2007-06-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-dev and nep-sea
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:eijswp:0233

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