Abstract:
This study examines the impact of agricultural landownership on poverty and
food security in Sri Lanka. The current study enriches the literature by extending
traditional two way poverty classification into four groups: Extremely Poor, Poor,
Vulnerable Non-Poor and Non-Poor and quantifies the impact of agricultural
landownership on each type of poverty. Similarly, the impact of agricultural
landownership on food security is also estimated considering the four types of
food security such as, Extremely Food Insecure, Food Insecure, Vulnerable to Food
Insecure and Food Secure, based on Minimum Dietary Energy Requirements. The
analysis is based on the secondary data from the Household Income and Expenditure
Survey (HIES) and two Ordered Probit Models were estimated for poverty and
food security to accomplish the objectives of the given study. The results highlight
that the probability of being non-poor of the households with agriculture land is
higher by 6.42% compared to the households without agricultural lands. Similarly,
having agriculture land also reduces the probability of being extremely poor, poor
and vulnerable to poverty by 0.1%, 2.2% and 4.1% respectively.In addition, the
empirical findings indicate that ownership of agricultural land lessens the probability
of being extremely food insecure (0.8%), food insecure (1.4%) and vulnerable
to food insecure (0.7%). Moreover, the probability of being food secure of the
households with agricultural lands is higher by 0.9% compared to the households
without agricultural lands. Therefore, the study emphasizes the significance of
agricultural landownership to mitigate the poverty and food insecurity which
ultimately enhancesthe household wellbeing. Hence, the current study strongly
recommends implementing appropriate policies to address land-right related issues
faced by developing countries ensuring long term wellbeing of the households.
