Land Reform and Property Rights among Small Farmers in Chile, 1968–86

Abstract

For more than 20 years the literature on Latin American agriculture has argued that land reform, defined as the expropriation and redistribution of land on large estates, is the rural property rights issue par excellence in the region. While sharing the efficiency and equity concerns of those favouring agrarian reform, it can nevertheless be argued that many poor peasants living in countries which have recently experienced significant programmes of land reform and/or counter-reform, such as Chile and Peru, confront a set of property rights problems which the transfer of land from large owners to certain of their workers has done little to resolve.KeywordsHousehold HeadSmall FarmerIrrigate LandLand ReformLand MarketThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.