Conference Agenda

This paper analyzes long-term income and wealth trajectories among smallholder households in agrarian reform settlements in Rondônia, Brazil (1996–2019). Although agrarian reform settlements representing less than 10% of the Amazon biome, they account for more than 25% of deforestation, illustrating a frontier dynamic in which natural capital is converted into cropland, livestock pasture, and other forms of produced and financial capital. We explore whether this loss of natural capital has resulted in gains in household welfare, adopting a weak sustainability perspective, and further assess how those gains are distributed. Using a balanced household panel, we combine convergence and catch-up regressions, inequality measures, and multinomial logit models to evaluate absolute and relative mobility in income and wealth. We relate these measures of mobility to von Thünen–type measures of access, Ricardian-type endowments, demographic factors, and livelihood portfolios. Results show that income and wealth increased over time, but gains were unequally distributed. Income showed proportional convergence—poorer households grew faster relative to their baseline—yet absolute gaps widened. Wealth accumulation was steadier but more stratified, with persistent advantage at the top. Although initial endowments were associated with the opportunity space households faced, time-varying strategies—particularly land accumulation and livelihood diversification—were more predictive of upward or downward mobility. Yet the link between income gains and long-term asset building was relatively weak, suggesting structural constraints such as limited access to credit, savings mechanisms, and technical assistance. Overall, settlers achieved economic gains but not lasting equality, underscoring how agrarian reform settlements—designed to promote equal access to land and economic opportunities—have come to mirror broader Amazonian patterns of unequal growth coupled with decline in natural capital. Policies that tailor interventions to households at different points in the income and wealth distributions—combining income stabilization, asset building, and recovery mechanisms for vulnerable groups with incentives for sustainable intensification and productive reinvestment—are central for aligning land distribution and rural development with long-term socio-environmental sustainability.