The Hawaiian Home Lands Program: Return to the Land or Bureaucratic Cage?

Cook's contact with Hawaii in 1778 initiated a tragic decline in the Hawaiian population and sweeping changes in social, economic, and political institutions prompted by Hawaii's integration with the outside world. Increasing economic integration after 1860 with the United States, Hawaii's main market for sugar, was coupled with U.S. annexation of Hawaii in 1898. The economic conditions of Hawaiians declined through World War I, and a movement arose among Hawaiians to rectify their situation by returning to small farms on government lands. In 1921, the federal Hawaiian Homes Commission Act set aside approximately 5 percent of island land for Hawaiians satisfying a 50 percent blood quantum requirement. Hawaiian Home Lands (HHL) Program experiments with farming failed, and the Program's focus switched to providing improved housing lots and mortgage subsidies for Hawaiians. Expenditures on the HHL Program were relatively high in its first 15 years, declined markedly from World War II to the 1960s, and were volatile thereafter. Our analysis concludes that (1) government support for the HHL Program was roughly related to Hawaiians' numerical voting power and political organization; (2) the HHL program, with its home-lot production subsidies and alienability constraints, was inefficient and inequitable; and (3) there are high institutional barriers to fundamental reform.