Land reform and illegal adoption of children
研究中国1978-1984年土地改革如何通过赋予农户土地权利，增加对儿童作为劳动力和继承人的需求，进而导致农村非法收养被遗弃或拐卖儿童的现象显著增加，并分析了宗族传统对这一影响的调节作用。
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. • Land reform (1978–84), which granted land rights, generated various incentives. • Rural households unable to legally adopt often resorted to illegal means. • Triple-differences method with a proxy variable tests the rise in illegal adoptions. • Clan influence, emphasizing bloodlines, moderated the effects of the reform. • Economic incentives and traditional values collectively shaped household responses.