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35522. Access to Land and Land Policy Reforms
- Author:
- Alaine de Janvry and Elisabeth Sadoulet
- Publication Date:
- 04-2001
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- Who should have access to land? What is the optimum definition of property rights and use rights in each particular context? Is government intervention justified to influence who has access to land and under what conditions? These questions remain, in most developing countries, highly contentious. It is indeed the case that land is all too often misallocated among potential users and worked under conditions of property or user rights that create perverse incentives. As a consequence, investments to enhance productivity are postponed, and responses to market incentives are weakened; many poor rural households are unable to gain sufficient (or any) access to land when this could be their best option out of poverty; land remains under-used and often idle side-by-side with unsatisfied demands for access to land; land is frequently abused by current users, jeopardizing sustainability; and violence over land rights and land use is all too frequent. With population growth and increasing market integration for the products of the land, these problems tend to become more acute rather than the reverse. As a result, rising pressures to correct these situations have led many countries to reopen the question of access to land and land policy reforms. While large scale expropriative and redistributive land reforms are generally no longer compatible with current political realities, there exist many alternative forms of property and use rights that offer policy instruments to alter the conditions of access to land and land use. A rich agenda of land policy interventions thus exists to alter who has access to land and under what conditions for the purposes of increasing efficiency, reducing poverty, enhancing sustainability, and achieving political stability.Historically, the most glamorous path of access to land has been through statemanaged coercive land reform. In most situations, however, this is not the dominant way land was accessed by current users and, in the future, this will increasingly be the case. Most of the land in use has been accessed through private transfers, community membership, direct appropriation, and market transactions. There are also new types of state-managed programmes of access to land that do not rely on coercion. For governments and development agents (NGOs, bi-lateral and international development agencies), the rapid decline in opportunities to access land through coercive land reform should thus not be seen as the end of the role of the state and development agents in promoting and altering access to land. The following paths of access to land in formal or informal, and in collective or individualized ownership can, in particular, be explored (Figure 1): (1) Intra-family transfers such as inheritances, inter-vivo transfers, and allocation of plots to specific family members; (2) access through community membership and informal land markets; (3) access through land sales markets; and (4) access through specific non-coercive policy interventions such colonization schemes, decollectivization and devolution, and land market-assisted land reform. Access to land in use can also be achieved through land rental markets (informal loans, land rental contracts) originating in any of these forms of land ownership. Each of these paths of access to land has, in turn, implications for the way land is used. Each can also be the object of policy interventions to alter these implications of land use. The focus of this policy brief is to explore each of these paths and analyse how to enhance their roles in helping increase efficiency, reduce poverty, increase equality, enhance sustainability, and achieve political stability.
- Topic:
- Demographics, Economics, and Government
- Political Geography:
- United States
35523. Strengthening Local Administration of Social Assistance in Russia
- Author:
- Raymond J. Struyk and L. Jerome Gallagher
- Publication Date:
- 11-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Urban Institute
- Abstract:
- A hallmark of the administration of social assistance under the socialist regimes in Eastern Europe and the USSR was the universal nature of eligibility for benefits, either to all citizens or to categories of deserving citizens, e.g., the physically handicapped. During the transition period since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation has taken limited steps to improve the targeting of benefits. The challenge to improvement is acute because the administration of the great majority of programs rests with agencies of local government. The question addressed here is how amenable local program administration is to improved targeting and more progressive program administration in general. Presented is an analysis of the results of assessments of two pilot programs implemented in two Russian cities in 2000–2001. The “school lunch pilot” introduced means testing in the school lunch program on a citywide basis; eligible families receive cash payments and all children pay the same price for their lunches in cash. The “jobs pilot” is a new, local means-tested program that provides cash support to families while unemployed workers search for work; continued receipt of funds is conditional on a minimum job search effort. We find that both programs were successfully implemented and that there was little resistance to the sharper targeting. On the other hand, a variety of problems with program administration were identified—problems that need to be addressed if program integrity and credibility are to be maintained.
- Topic:
- Economics, Government, and Human Welfare
- Political Geography:
- Russia, Europe, and Asia
35524. Russian Nonprofits as Contracted Providers of Municipal Social Services: Initial Experience
- Author:
- Raymond J. Struyk and Kirill Chagin
- Publication Date:
- 08-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Urban Institute
- Abstract:
- In the Russian Federation the delivery of social services to deserving population groups is mostly the responsibility of municipalities and other local governments. Services are delivered by municipal agencies. One way to inject competition into the delivery system is for local government to hold competitions to contract for social service delivery. The competitions can be open to nonprofit organizations (NPOs), some of which have been providing assistance in recent years to needy individuals and families similar to those that would be contracted.
- Topic:
- Economics, Human Welfare, and Non-Governmental Organization
- Political Geography:
- Russia, Europe, and Asia
35525. Australian Unemployment Protection: Challenges and New Directions
- Author:
- Wayne Vroman and Vera Brusentsev
- Publication Date:
- 07-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Urban Institute
- Abstract:
- This paper examines Australia's scheme of unemployment protection and makes some comparisons with unemployment protection in the United States of America. A major concern of the paper is to understand the differences in unemployment duration between these two economies. Policies followed in the United States intended to reduce duration are reviewed for possible applicability in Australia.
- Topic:
- Economics, Government, and Human Welfare
- Political Geography:
- United States, Australia, and Southeast Asia
35526. The Integration of Immigrant Families in the United States
- Author:
- Michael Fix, Wendy Zimmermann, and Jeffrey Passel
- Publication Date:
- 07-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Urban Institute
- Abstract:
- What do we know about the integration of immigrant families within the United States—the progress these families are making and their reception in the communities where they settle? How are immigrants affected by the nation's integration policies or lack thereof? What directions might immigrant integration and the policies governing it take in the future?
- Topic:
- Government, Human Welfare, and Migration
- Political Geography:
- United States
35527. Are Immigrants Leaving California? Settlement Patterns of Immigrants in the Late 1990s
- Author:
- Wendy Zimmermann and Jeffrey S. Passel
- Publication Date:
- 04-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Urban Institute
- Abstract:
- For at least the last century and a half, the immigrant population in the United States has been highly concentrated in a handful of states. Even at the beginning of the 20th century, when the foreign-born population was less than half its current size, just over half of all immigrants lived in only six states. By 1990, that share had increased to nearly three-quarters. But, between 1990 and 1999, the geographic concentration of immigrants began to wane slightly, as the foreign-born population grew substantially faster in states that have not traditionally received large numbers of immigrants. This dispersal of the immigrant population is particularly noteworthy in the face of dramatically increased numbers, especially in the new settlement areas, and policy changes surrounding the noncitizen population.
- Topic:
- Demographics, Economics, and Migration
- Political Geography:
- United States and California
35528. Hardship Among Children of Immigrants: Findings From the 1999 National Survey of American Families
- Author:
- Randy Capps
- Publication Date:
- 02-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Urban Institute
- Abstract:
- The 1999 National Survey of America's Families (NSAF) reveals that hardship is greater for children of immigrants than for children of U.S. natives in three areas of basic need: food, housing, and health care. The data also indicate that the relative generosity of differing state policies on noncitizens' access to public benefits generally corresponds with hardship levels. Because the NSAF cross-sectional data do not allow assessment of changes over time, these hardship levels cannot necessarily be ascribed to federal welfare reform or state policies. Nonetheless, these findings reinforce observations on the vulnerability of a population whose access to the social safety net has been diminished by recent policy changes. This analysis is one of the first studies based on nationally representative data to examine hardship among immigrant families in the post-welfare-reform era.
- Topic:
- Human Welfare, Migration, and Poverty
- Political Geography:
- United States
35529. The Politics of Pensions in European Social Insurance Countries
- Author:
- Martin Schludi
- Publication Date:
- 11-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
- Abstract:
- This paper analyzes national processes of pension reform in countries with systems of old-age provision largely following the Bismarckian type (Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden). Operating on a defined benefit/pay-as-you-go basis and mainly financed out of wage-based social contributions, pension systems in these countries are highly vulnerable to demographic and economic pressures. Therefore, pension reform has emerged as a major issue in these countries since the early 1990s. Although there are substantial similarities in the direction of reform, the degree of policy change varies considerably even among countries with similar legacies in pension policy. As a closer inspection of national patterns of pension policy-making shows, the political feasibility of pension reforms and the degree of adjustment in pension policy critically depends on the government's ability to orchestrate a reform consensus either with the parliamentary opposition or with the trade unions. The paper tries to identify the conditions under which a “pension pact” between those actors is likely to emerge.
- Topic:
- Economics, Government, and International Trade and Finance
35530. Do Affluent Countries Face an Incomes-Jobs Tradeoff?
- Author:
- Lane Kenworthy
- Publication Date:
- 10-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
- Abstract:
- A commonly-held view suggests that affluent nations face a tradeoff between incomes and jobs. According to this view, in the United States pay for workers at the bottom of the earnings distribution (relative to those in the middle) is very low and government unemployment-related benefits (the “replacement rate”) are stingy, but this facilitates the creation of lots of new jobs and encourages such individuals to take those jobs. The result is a high rate of employment and low unemployment. In much of Western Europe relative pay levels are higher for those at the bottom and benefits are more generous, but this is said to discourage job creation and to reduce the willingness of the unemployed to accept low-wage jobs. The consequence is low employment and high unemployment. I undertake a comparative assessment of this tradeoff view, based on pooled cross-section time-series analyses of 14 OECD countries in the 1980s and 1990s. The findings suggest that greater pay equality and a higher replacement rate do reduce employment growth in low-productivity private-sector service industries and in the economy as a whole. However, these effects are relatively weak. The results point to a variety of viable options for countries wishing to maintain or move toward a desirable combination of jobs and equality.
- Topic:
- Economics and International Trade and Finance
- Political Geography:
- United States and Europe