Displacement-induced inequalities in Koto Panjang resettlement villages of Indonesia

Abstract

We evaluated the impact of the displacement project on land and income inequalities in Koto Panjang resettlement villages of Riau Province of Indonesia. The displaced households received equally compensated land before the project’s operation. We took that displacement as a treatment and conducted a with-and-without project comparison to the changes in the household economy, putting the non-displaced households as counterfactual. Using the 2003 and 2013 Indonesian Agricultural Household Income Survey, we found that the displaced areas had equally distributed land but unequally distributed income. In addition, both land and income levels were higher in the displaced than in the non-displaced.