0.26 mn in the country’s central part. Average land endowments are small; per capita land available is 1.24 mu (1mu is equivalent to 1/15<sup>th</sup> of a hectare) overall, from less than 1 mu in the Coast and Southwest to 1.89 mu in the relatively land abundant North and Northeast. While this is small by international standards, irrigation allows production of two crops (e.g. rice and wheat) per year. With average yields of 413, 240 and 327 kg/mu (or 6.2, 3.6 and 4.9 tons/ha) for rice, wheat, and maize, respectively in the mid1990s (Jin _et al._ 2002), access to a plot of average size provides a basis to feed a family and in addition produce at least some marketable surplus.<sup>22</sup> Village accounts highlight the importance of revenue from land takings as a major source of village income: in fact, with 37% of the total, land-related revenue, mainly the mark-up from sales of lands that had been acquired compulsorily, is the single biggest source of own revenue by villages in our sample. This is followed by income from -collective and private- enterprises and “other” sources each of which contributes some 27%. Although they make up only about 8% of own revenue in general, taxes and fees are of overriding importance in the Center where they account for almost 37%.

The spread of democratic decision-making at the local level is evident from the fact that, in about 70% of villages, director and party secretary had been elected in 2001.<sup>23</sup> Although distribution of land certificates had been mandatory since 1998, only 83% of households possessed such documents, a figure that varies from 67% in the North and Northeast to 93% in the Southwest. Our quiz to test knowledge of the law also illustrate that, despite a rather high general awareness of the RLCL, appreciation of the law’s substantive content remains limited. Only slightly more than half of leaders and households knew that big adjustments are no longer allowed under the law and less than one fifth were able to correctly identify the conditions under which small readjustments are permissible. This suggests considerable remaining scope for focused dissemination activities to educate villagers on key aspects of the legislation.

# **3.2 Incidence of different types of land reallocation**

Consistent with the literature that has identified village leaders’ ability to initiate land reallocations as a main manifestation of rent seeking and a key reason for tenure insecurity, our data illustrate that incidence and scope of reallocations undertaken during the 2000-2004 period vary across regions and over time (Table 2). The share of villages that experienced at least one land reallocation during this period is, with almost one third (29%), surprisingly high as villages were at most expected to have had a “final” readjustment when issuing 30-year contracts when the original 15 year land use contracts issued in the early 1980s had expired around 1998. The incidence of reallocation varies between more than 40% in the

> 22 With an average annual per capita grain consumption of 220 kg, one mu produces enough grain for about 3 persons (Huang and Rozelle 1998). 23 As it is difficult to determine whether the director or the secretary is the main decision-maker and we focus on accountability, we require both to be elected to categorize a village as “democratic”. Note that, while the director is elected by all villagers above 18 years, only party members participate in elections for the secretary (Morduch and Sicular 2000).

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