Mobility in land ownership and occupation

The household-level endowment of land is very low in Bangladesh because of extreme population pressure. Bangladesh now supports a population of about 160 million with an arable land of about 8.0 million ha. The latest Agricultural Census  enumerated 17.8 million rural households in 1996, of which 29 per cent did not own any cultivated land,  and 53 per cent owned less than 0.2 ha (called "functionally landless" in Bangladesh), an amount that cannot generate sufficient income. At the other extreme, only 0.1 per cent of households owned land in holdings of over 10 ha and 2.1 per cent owned more than 3.0 ha.
Repeat household surveys carried out by late Mahabub Hossain showed a similar pattern of land ownership as reported in the report of the Agricultural Census 1996. Households owning up to 0.2 ha of land made up 47 per cent of households in 1987-88; the number increased to 59 per cent, indicating increased and acute incidence of landlessness in Bangladesh. The proportion of households owning more than 2.0 ha declined from 8.2 to 4.2 per cent of all rural households within the last two decades, and their share of total land owned declined from 42 to 32 per cent. The average size of land owned per household declined from 0.61 to 0.53 ha during the same period and further to 0.47 ha in recent years. The picture shows a growing trend of pauperisation in the ownership of this important natural resource base for agricultural production.
The mobility in landownership found from the panel data for the recent period shows that nearly 69 per cent of households which were functionally landless in 2000 remained so in recent years. But five per cent of them made an upward transition of becoming small landowner, and another two per cent became medium landowner. At the other end, 70 per cent of the medium and large landowners (who owned over 1.0 ha) had their position unchanged, 27 per cent became small owners, and three per cent functionally landless.  There were both upward and downward mobility at the lower as well as at the upper level of landownership. The highest mobility is found in the marginal landownership group of 0.2 to 0.4 ha. In this group 54 per cent maintained their position, 24 per cent had downward mobility and 19 per cent had upward mobility. In other groups, almost 70 per cent maintained their position in the same group.
The information obtained from the repeat surveys on the occupation of the household workers indicates that farming has continued to be the single major source of livelihood for the panel of households throughout the period for the last three decades. Rural workers dependent on crop farming either as primary or secondary occupation at about 55 per cent remained unchanged till recently.  The number of workers earning their livelihoods from participation in the agricultural labour market declined substantially from 25 per cent to 19 per cent. If only primary occupation is considered, the decline is much more pronounced, from 20 to 10 per cent. Counting both farming and agricultural labour, the agricultural sector alone provided livelihood to about 65 per cent of all rural workers in 1987-88. IN recent years, this share came down to 50 per cent largely because of drop in the percentage of agricultural wage labour households.
The snapshot of occupational distribution every year, however, does not reveal who went where and therefore masks the identity of the households switching primary occupation across sectors to change their fortune. In order to trace the pathway out of poverty, it is necessary to gain insight into occupational mobility.  Among household heads who reported farming as the primary occupation in 1987-88 remained farmers in 2000; the corresponding number was 77 per cent in the recent period panel. For those who reported service as the primary occupation in 1987-88, 55 per cent remained in the same occupation in 2000: the number increased to 70 per cent in the recent panel.   Agricultural labour and the non-agricultural labour are the most unstable occupations.  The main occupational mobility has been from agricultural labour to farming (34%), business to farming (30%), non-agricultural labour to farming (21.4%), and service to farming (18.8%). The inflow of households from agricultural and non-agricultural labour into farming is remarkably greater than the outflow from farming to those occupations. There was very little mobility from business and services to agricultural and non-agricultural labour. The former are in general higher remunerative occupations than the latter.
The observed mobility into cultivation is consistent with a structural shift associated with the surge in tenancy in cultivation in recent years as reported by Dr Mahabub Hossain in his writings. As higher remunerative employment opportunities in the rural non-farm sector expand, the better-educated and affluent households move away from land-based livelihood in quest of better opportunities in the non-farm sector. They rent out land primarily to the landless and marginal landowners.
How far this transition in the rural occupational structure has contributed to income growth and improvement in the overall economic condition, particularly to the change in economic status of the poor, remains to be answered in the analysis to follow. By now the prospect of expansion of land resource and increase in cropping intensity have already reached their limits in Bangladesh. In these circumstances, the continued dependence on the farm sector of one half of the rural population for their livelihood implies that their income generating activities have to be supported by agricultural diversification, technological improvement and access to know-how.
Abdul Bayes is a Professor of Economics at Jahangirnagar University. [email protected]