Land reform and illegal adoption of children

Abstract

The paper examines how China’s land reform between 1978 and 1984 altered economic incentives, leading to observable household responses, with involvement in illegal adoption as a key example. The reform transferred land rights from collectives to individual households, granting them control over land-based income and thereby increasing the demand for children as labor and heirs. Leveraging a unique dataset that tracks the inflow of trafficked children and the staggered rollout of the reform, we use triple differences and other identification strategies to demonstrate that land decollectivization significantly increased the illegal adoption of abandoned or abducted children in rural areas. This land usage rights shock was moderated by clan influence, which traditionally valued bloodlines, highlighting the importance of the interaction between culture and institutions.