• Erika Igarashi Graduate School of Economics, the University of Tokyo

• Sawako Shirahase TCJS Director

Although it is known that ensuring land ownership contributed to economic development by improving agricultural productivity, few studies have investigated whether or not guaranteed the land property rights affected demographic dynamics. The purpose of this study is to examine whether the increase of land-own farmers caused increases in marriage rates, depending on the increased economic value of getting married. In this study, we apply the difference-in-difference estimation strategy with the exogenous variations in the proportion of farmers’ own land from the 1946 postwar land reform. General Headquarters (GHQ) carried out this land reform without regard for Japanese customs, giving land rights to tenant farmers and making them own-land farmers. We found that the marriage rates increased significantly in areas where the GHQ implemented land reforms to a high degree. There was a possibility that the marriage rates increased in areas where the GHQ completed the land reform because people became land-own farmers and economically stable.

Mar 2020 M.A. in Economics, The University of Tokyo
Mar 2018 B.A. in Economics, Tohoku University