Non-Farm Diversification, Poverty, Economic Mobility and Income Inequality : A Case Study in Village India

Himanshu ; Lanjouw, Peter ; Murgai, Rinku ; Stern, Nicholas

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: ABSOLUTE POVERTY;    ADVERSE IMPACTS;    AGRICULTURAL ACTIVITIES;    AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT;    AGRICULTURAL INCOMES;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-6451
RP-ID  :  WPS6451

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

This paper assembles data at theall-India level and for the village of Palanpur, UttarPradesh, to document the growing importance, and influence,of the non-farm sector in the rural economy between theearly 1980s and late 2000s. The suggestion from the combinedNational Sample Survey and Palanpur data is of a slowprocess of non-farm diversification, whose distributionalincidence, on the margin, is increasingly pro-poor.Thevillage-level analysis documents that the non-farm sector isnot only increasing incomes and reducing poverty, butappears as well to be breaking down long-standing barriersto mobility among the poorest segments of rural society.Efforts by the government of India to accelerate the processof diversification could thus yield significant returns interms of declining poverty and increased income mobility.The evidence from Palanpur also shows, however, that at thevillage-level a significant increase in income inequalityhas accompanied diversification away from the farm.Agrowing literature argues that such a rise in inequalitycould affect the fabric of village society, the way in whichvillage institutions function and evolve, and the scope forcollective action at the village level.Failure to keepsuch inequalities in check could thus undermine the pro-poorimpacts from the process of structural transformationcurrently underway in rural India.