Long View of Agricultural Land Use and Population Growth in India: An Assessment of Causal Relationship

Arjun Jana , International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)
Srinivas Goli, International Institute for Population Sciences

The paper investigates the causal relationship between change in agricultural land use and population growth in India using long-term time-series and district level panel datasets (1961-2021). We theorize that there is an inverted ‘U-shape’ relationship between change in population growth rate and agricultural land. The time-series graphical analyses do reveal an inverted ‘U-shape’ relationship between population growth rate and cultivated land with a break-point in 1980s. Dynamic panel data regression estimates suggest that the impact of population growth rate on cultivated land was positive and significant—during pre-1980s, there was an expansion of cultivated land in response to the exponential increase of the population, while in the post-1980s, there is a gradual reduction in cultivated land probably due to the rise in agricultural productivity and also decline in population growth rate. The direction of causation is higher from population growth to cultivated land. Findings are re-affirmed using several robustness checks.

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 Presented in Session P3. Migration, Economics, Policies, History