Genocide and Land strongScarcitystrong Can Rwandan Rural Households.pdf

Genocide and Land Scarcity: Can Rwandan Rural Households Manage? Marijke Verpoorten and Lode Berlage Genocide and Land Scarcity: Can Rwandan Rural Households Manage? Marijke Verpoorten Aspirant van het Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek – Vlaanderen University of Leuven Lode Berlage University of Leuven ∗ We are grateful to MINAGRI (Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock) and USAID for the use of the pre-war dataset, and to Philip Verwimp for the tracing of the households in 1999/2000 and for collaboration in the early stages of this research. Field research for the post-war dataset was made possible by funding from DGOS (Belgian General Direction of Development Assistance) and VLIR (Flemish Interuniversity Council). We received useful comments on an earlier draft presented at the EUDN (European Development Research Network) workshop for doctoral students in Bonn and at a seminar at the CSAE (Centre for the Study of African Economies) in Oxford. We especially acknowledge helpful comments of Stefan Dercon. The authors are exclusively responsible for all errors and omissions. All views and opinions are theirs alone. Corresponding author: Marijke Verpoorten, University of Leuven, Departement of Economics, Naamsestraat 69, 3000 Leuven, Tel: 00 32 16 326851, Fax: 00 32 16 326796, E-mail address: marijke.verpoorten@econ.kuleuven.be 1 Abstract During the nineties Rwandan households faced severe shocks of war and genocide. In addition, the structural problem of land scarci