Land Reforms and Women’s Nutrition: Evidence from India

Access to land is a crucial determinant of poverty in poor, agrarian communities of developing countries. Hence, redistributive policies in many countries have focused on land reforms to ensure a more equitable distribution of land among the rural population. India, for example, embarked on an ambitious and extensive program of land reforms from the 1950s onwards. Prior research suggests that land reforms in India did reduce poverty (Besley and Burgess, 2002). However, the effect of land reforms on hunger or the actual nutritional status of the rural poor has not been properly studied. This research therefore investigates whether land reforms in India led to an improvement in the long term nutritional status of rural women as measured by height. Specifically, it addresses the following questions: • What is the overall effect of a woman’s exposure to land reforms on her height? • What is the effect of each additional year of exposure to land reforms during childhood or adolescence on a woman’s height? • Are there intergenerational effects of land reforms? Does mother’s exposure to reforms improve nutritional status for 0-3 year old children?