Sawah Ownership and Economic Status 15

3. Sawah Ownership and Economic Status 15

From a sociological point of view, land ownership itself is

a reflection of its owner’s social status in Java. Several sources mention that in rural Java, social stratification based on land ownership was apparent especially during the colonial pe-

riod 16 . In general, villagers who owned land enjoyed a higher respect from other people in the community, than those who did not. Depending on the norms that were followed in a cer- tain community, the form of land tenure also determined the degree of respect from other fellow villagers. Before 1960 when the national Basic Agrarian Law was enacted, in many areas the rural population was divided into classes based on diffe- rent rights of access to land and the obligations of tribute, tax and labour services that went with them. They were, thus, stratified into several layers. The highest stratum consisted of ‘nucleus’ villagers, that is those whose ancestors settled the area in the distant past, owned land in the village and pos- sessed their own houses and house gardens. Among them were those who had access to communal land provided they were prepared to fulfil obligations in the execution of communal repair and maintenance projects.

15 Economic status in this paper simply refers to “wealth”. In view of the nature of the data collected, i. e. data from the re-census,

this “wealth” is measured by three indicators namely, value of consumer durables, farm animals and dry land owned. Dry land here includes all agricultural land on which various crops that do not need special water treatment can be cultivated, thus including house gardens (excluding the land on which the house is built).

16 See, for example, J. M. Van der Kroef (1960).

Landownership Tenancy, and ... The second layers were those who were nominated as can-

didates for the first status mentioned above. Generally they had their own compound and garden. The next stratum were land- less laborers who live in their own houses built on someone else’s compound; and the lowest stratum consisted of absolute land- less laborers who have nothing to offer but their labor. In bet- ween these categories were various statutes of a transitional or mixed character, and all put together constituted a complex pat- tern of land tenure relations with many local variations.

The purpose of mentioning social stratification described briefly above is simply to give an overview which may be help- ful in understanding the importance of land ownership in ru- ral areas. In this paper, however, owing to the lack of such qualitative data it is impossible to examine whether or not such a “social portrait” still persists. More attention is there- fore paid to the possible links between land ownership and economic status as will be discussed below.

Before we discuss in detail, it is necessary to look at the overall pattern of relationship between sawah owned and eco- nomic status, as presented in Table 6.6. It clearly appears that the data from this table support our belief that land ownership is closely related to economic status. When we look at the cor- relation coefficients for each indicator, the data for all house- holds indicate a positive and significant correlation, although the coefficients are not high (see last column). By village, how- ever, the results vary. In the lowland villages (except for Vil- lage I), dry land variation is less important than in the upland villages, especially in terms of pekarangan (house gardens) which is much less significant. In most upland villages on the

Ranah Studi Agraria other hand, correlation coefficients are high and significant,

with the exceptions of Village VI (Gunungwangi) where quality of dry land varies greatly, and of Village VII (Malausma) in terms of all house gardens. In terms of “all dry land” and “all dry agricultural land”, the correlation coefficients are especially high in the upland.

Looking at farm animals owned, results from the correla- tion exercise were variable. The coefficients are very high and significant in Wargabinangun and Gemarang. The likely expla- nation is that in these two villages, buffaloes, one of the expen- sive farm animals, also represent social status which went along with sawah ownership. In Village II (Lanjan), the correlation is negative. For technical reasons, land was prepared in Lanjan by ploughs only in wet season and only by a few farmers, while the use of tractors has become more common. This may ex- plain the small number of buffaloes or cattle owned in this village.

In the upland villages, sawah ownership is correlated sig- nificantly with farm animals owned (except in Village VI where only a few farm animals were found), although the coefficients were not high.

Looking at the other indicator of economic status, namely, value of consumer durables, it appears that this variable was the most consistent of all, though correlation coefficients were also not high ranging from 0.23–0.47. If we exclude extreme values, it turns out that the coefficient increases significantly in all villages (See row III b in Table 6.6) although it unexpect- edly falls in Village VI (Gunungwangi).

An additional point may be noted when we look at corre-

Table 6.6. Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficients Between Area of Sawah Owned and Several other Indicators of Economic Status by Village (All Households)

Indicators of Economic Status

All Wargabinangun Lanjan Gemarang Sukosari Sukaambit Gunungwangi Malausma Ciwangi Villages

(VII) (VIII)

I. OTHER LAND OWNED 1. All Dry Land (ha)

0.55** 0.60** 0.30** 2. All dry agricultural

0.50** 0.58** 0.27** land owned (ha)

0.02 0.44** 0.59** 0.20** house) (m )

3. House garden (excl. 2 0.36**

0.17 0.12 0.60** 0.23** (incl. house) (m ) II. VALUE OF FARM

4. All house garden 2 0.33**

0.04 0.41** 0.48** 0.22** ANIMALS (Rp)

andownership T

0.47 0.27** 0.40** 0.24** DURABLES (Rp)

III. VALUE OF CONSUMER

enancy **) = Level of significance 0.01

*) = Level of significance 0.05 , and ...

1) Excluding house garden 2) Excludes extreme values (

Rp 2.000.000,-); 10 cases)

Ranah Studi Agraria lation coefficients for sawah owners only (See Appendix Table

6.2.). Overall, there is less significant in the lowland than in the upland villages. The other economic status indicator, consu- mer durables, tends to be more highly correlated with land owned, especially in the lowland villages. This may be because of the importance of farm labour incomes among landless households (see Section E below).

The figures on the means and the extreme values of three indicators by area of sawah owned are presented in Table 6.7 and Appendix Tables 6.3; 6.4 and 6.5. In general, the first two indicators of socio economic status, namely the area of dry land owned and the value of consumer durables show a posi- tive correlation with the area of sawah owned. For dry land owned, for example, the figures on the mean areas as well as on the proportion of households who own 0.25 ha or more, increase concommittantly with the area of sawah owned (see Table 6.7.). The same pattern occurs with the second indica- tor consumer durables. The figures on the mean values, and also on the proportion of households owning Rp 150.000,- or more of consumer durables, are clearly related to the area classes of sawah owned. This is supported by the figures on the proportion of households who own less than Rp 25.000,- of consumer durables, which is inversely related to the area classes of sawah owned. As for the third indicator, namely the value of farm animals owned, while its mean values show the same pattern as that of the other two indicators, the figures on the proportion of households who own Rp 50.000,- or more do not seem to show a clear trends. The latter appears to be positively related to area classes of sawah owned up to owner-

Landownership Tenancy, and ... ship of less than 0.5 ha, then drops considerably from 32.8

percent to 27.4 percent in the largest class of sawah owned. Despite the slightly unclear trends of farm animals owned, however, based on the three indicators as a whole these over- all data show that it would not be unreasonable to suggest that sawah land ownership is a major determinant of economic status of the rural households.

Table 6.7. Overall Mean Values of Dry Land, of Farm Animals, and of

Consumer Durables, by Area of Sawah Owned, 1983

Non-Land Asset Area of Sawah Owned (ha) All

0.250 - 0.500+ Households <0.500

DRY LAND OWNED a) Mean (ha)

0.164 0.257 0.107 b) HHs owning <0.25

1.7 10.2 23.3 27.8 11.7 ha (%)* CONSUMER DURABLES a) Mean (Rp 1.000,-)

156.4 321.1 155.1 b) HHs owning <Rp

24.2 13.1 6.3 4.7 14.7 25.000 (%)* c) HHs owning ≥Rp

17.4 26.1 35.2 58.5 29.0 150.000,- (%)* FARM ANIMALS OWNED a) Mean (Rp 1.000,-)

20.5 35.7 61.8 99.9 43.6 b) HHs owning Rp

10.9 22.4 32.8 27.4 20.6 50.000,- (%)* TOTAL Households (N=)

Source: Primary data, Re-census, 1983 Note: *) Percentage to total households in each class of sawah area owned.

Inter Village Variation (a) Dry Land Owned

As expected, in terms of dry land owned, there is a clear difference between lowland and upland villages. In each of the lowland villages, mean dry land owned for all households are less than one-tenth of a hectare, the highest mean being only 0.053 ha (in Village III); whereas in the upland land villages

Ranah Studi Agraria they are relatively much larger with the lowest means of 0.143

ha in Village VII (Malausma) (see Appendix Table 6.3.). Simi- larly, in terms of the proportion of households who own 0.25

ha or more, the difference between lowland and upland villages are more than 10 percent, with the lowest figure 14 percent (in Village VI). More important than this, however, when we look at the two measures (the means and the proportion of house- holds) by classes of sawah owned in each village, all indicate a positive relationship between dry land owned and area of sawah owned, except in Wargabinangun and Gemarang where, in terms of the proportion of households owning 0.25 ha or more the relationship is not so strong as in the order villages.

(b) Consumer Durables

For this indicator, three measures were applied in examining its possible relationship with the area of sawah owned. First is the mean values (in rupiah), second is the per- centage of households who own less than Rp 25.000,- of con- sumer durables (here after, the “bottom”), and the third is the percentage of households who own Rp 150.000,- or more (here after, the “top”).

As mentioned earlier for all villages as a whole, by all mea- sure the data show that there is a relationship between owner- ship of consumer durables and the area of sawah owned (Ap- pendix Table 6.4 last three rows). Looking at each village, how- ever, large variations between villages are identified. In Vil- lage IV, VII and VIII, the relationships are very clear by all measures. In Village I and III it is slightly unclear by the first measure (in Village I, the mean value of consumer durables in

Landownership Tenancy, and ... the sawah owning group of less than 0.25 ha is Rp 104.900,-

whereas in the next higher group it drops to Rp 79.000,-; the corresponding figures in Village III are Rp 158.000,- and Rp 156.700,- respectively). Similar tendencies occurred in Vil- lage II and V, not only by the first measure but also by the third measure. Most unclear is the case of Village VI (Gunung- wangi) whereby all measures the data show fluctuating trends, perhaps because of the importance of dry land commercial crops (especially chilies) in recent years. Nevertheless, one thing is clear: in the highest group of sawah owned area (i.e. the ownership of 0.5 ha and above), the mean that taking 0.5

ha as a cutting line (the Sajogyo cutting point for petani gurem) between the haves and the have-nots seems realistic. Another point worth noting is the inter village variations concerning the data for all households in each village (Appen- dix Table 6.4.; last column). One extreme is in the case of Vil- lage V (Sukaambit), where the mean value of consumer durab- les owned is extremely high (319.700 compared to Rp 156.100,- for all villages). Even in the landless group the fig- ure is still very high (Rp 265.600,- compared to only Rp 106.200,- for all villages); indeed the mean for landless in this village is higher than that for all classes except 0.5 ha and above in all the other villages. Only one percent of the total households belonged to the “bottom” group (owners or less than Rp 25.000,-) whereas the “top” households included more than 60 percent; Village V clearly has relatively better socio- economic conditions compared to the other villages. There is quite a number of white collar and professional employees, off farm employment is more important and the level of educa-

Ranah Studi Agraria tion is relatively higher than in the other villages (see, Wiradi,

Chris Manning and Sri Hartoyo, 1983). The other extreme is in the case of Village IV (Sukosari) where the mean value of consumer durables for all house- holds is the lowest among all villages (Rp 104.800,-). The likely explanation for Sukosari being so low is that this village has a relatively high population density (14 persons per ha of agri- cultural land) and many off farm jobs are available mainly in low wage activities. In contrast with Village V, the figures on the “top-bottom” comparison, the data in Appendix Table 6.4 (last column) also suggest that in the upland villages the num- ber of wealthier households is relatively larger than that in the lowland villages.

As a final remark on this section, the above description can be summarized into two points. First, the degree of inequ- ality, overall as well as in each village, is much higher than that for all Java, except in Village VI (Gunungwangi) and Village

VII (Malausma) (the Gini index being 0.454 and 0.484 respec- tively, thus slightly lower than 0.49 for all Java). Secondly, although land ownership did have influence on economic sta- tus, the question as to what extent land ownership influences income status still needs to be further studied since economic status may not always reflect income status. Since effective control of land involves tenancy arrangements, it is therefore logical that income is influenced by tenancy. However, tenan- cy, which is related to land cultivation, may be influenced by land ownership. In the following section, therefore, sawah cultivation and tenancy will be discussed first before we come to discussing sources of income in Section E.

Landownership Tenancy, and ...