Socio-Economic Profile of Labour Households in Rural Punjab

Abstract

The present paper is an attempt to analyze the socio-economic profile of the labour households in rural Punjab. The study revealed that majority of rural labour households belonged to the scheduled caste category. As far as the distribution of sampled rural labour households according to the family type was concerned, it was found that 46.42 percent of the total rural labour households had nuclear families, while the remaining 53.58 percent have joint families. Majority of the rural labourers were living in semi-pucca houses. Further, if we look at the housing condition, 54.72 percent of rural labourers owned the houses of average condition, 40.19 percent owned good condition households and 5.09percent owned dilapidated houses. The analysis further showed that as many as 20.35percentof the sampled labour population was illiterate. A few persons from sampled labour households educated above matric. Although large majority of the sampled labour population were from the working-age group yet the ratio of dependents was high among rural labour households. This was due to lower employment opportunities in rural areas.