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Land Reform in the Middle East: A Note on its Redistributive Effects

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Hossein Askari ,
John Thomas Cummings  and
James Toth
Hossein Askari
Affiliation:
International Business and Middle Eastern Studies at The University of Texas at Austin
John Thomas Cummings
Affiliation:
International Business at The University of Texas
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Extract

In any program of land reform, the method of determining compensation for the land to the former landlord and the cost to the peasant can be of great social and economic significance. This possibility arises from the fact that the officially determined value of redistributed land—whether it is below, equal to, or above the true market value—could have a considerable direct effect on the distribution of wealth among the various socioeconomic classes. Especially in more traditional societies, where the tax system is not well developed, such a one-time redistribution of wealth may be the most dramatic option open to the policy maker who wishes to mitigate income inequalities. Furthermore, such a change in income distribution, in turn, will influence many other economic variables. For instance, an increase in rural incomes, ceteris paribus, would tend to slow down rural-urban migration; this would then lower urban unemployment and raise urban incomes.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 10 , Issue 4 , Autumn 1977 , pp. 267 - 279
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1977

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References

Notes

1. Middle East land reform has been discussed in considerable detail by many authors; for example, Warriner, Doreen Land Reform and Development in the Middle East (London: Oxford University Press, 1962)Google Scholar, and Land Reform in Principle and Practice (London: Oxford University Press, 1969)Google Scholar; Saab, Gabriel S. The Egyptian Agrarian Reform 1952-1962 (London: Oxford University Press, 1967)Google Scholar; Lambton, Ann K. S. The Persian Land Reform 1962-1966 (London: Oxford University Press, 1969)Google Scholar; Mabro, Robert The Egyptian Economy 1952-1972 (London: Oxford University Press, 1974)Google Scholar; Askari, Hossein and Thomas Cummings, John The Middle East Economies in the 1970s: A Comparative Approach (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1976).Google Scholar

2. Mabro, op. cit., pp. 65-66.

3. Warriner, 1962, op. cit., p. 32.

4. For the purpose of this calculation we will assume that the first 1000 dinars was also payed over the period in question.

5. The assumption is made here that the net income of the landowner accrued from the rental payments of his tenants.