The Role of Employment Diversification in Reducing Vulnerability to Poverty among Marginal and Small-holder Agricultural Households in India

Abstract

This article combines two relatively nascent and interrelated approaches to poverty analysis and measurement, that is, the asset-based approach and the vulnerability approach to assess the poverty status of various land-owning classes in rural India. Contingent on the finding that marginal and smallholder households constitute a high-risk group in terms of the incidence of current poverty and vulnerability to future poverty, the study explores the role of non-agricultural activity in providing livelihood security and tackling poverty and vulnerability among land-poor rural households. The findings reveal that while most types of rural non-farm employment have significant poverty-reducing effects, human capital constitutes the most potent element in tackling poverty in the target group. We therefore suggest that an emphasis on skill upgradation of marginal and small landholders, coupled with policies directed towards development of non-farm activity, could provide an effective, permanent solution for curbing poverty and mitigating livelihood risks among these households.

Entrepreneurship the mediating role of finance and entrepreneurial education for small farmers in developing countries: evidence from India

“…The consequence of finance constraint has led SMFs to use traditional methods of cultivation leading to low productivity because they are unable to make heavy investments for better irrigation facilities, seeds, fertilizers and machinery. These findings are supported by (Chavan and Sivamurugan, 2017;Dey, 2018;Kashanahs, 2001;Kohli and Singh, 2005;Murgai et al, 2001;Olubiyo, 2003) access to finance has limited growth amongst SMFs, findings supported by the World Bank (2001). Access to financial products and services is a key ingredient to promote entrepreneurship amongst SMFs and safeguard them against non-regulated informal financiers.…”

“…Such structures enable the agricultural sector to align itself with the supply chain relationship to rationalise the interconnectedness between supplier and buyer (McElwee & Bosworth, 2010). In contrast, within many developing economies, 90 percent of total landholdings are small, marginal and non-economical due to increasing cultivation costs (Dey, 2018;Meher, 2015). This suggests that agricultural entrepreneurship is a function of the agricultural environment, farmers' competencies, access to finance that has been found to be often associated with older, larger size farms (Bateman and Ray, 1994).…”

Food Poverty, Vulnerability, and Food Consumption Inequality Among Smallholder Households in Ghana: A Gender-Based Perspective

“…Assuming that consumption is log-normally distributed, the probability that the household will be poor, that is, the vulnerability index is: where denotes the cumulative density of the standard normal variate. Following Dey ( 2018 ), households with a probability greater than or equal to 0.50 can be described as having a high vulnerability to poverty risk.…”

The role of social capital in developing sustainable micro-entrepreneurship among rural women in India: a theoretical framework

“…The National Rural Livelihood Programme (NRLM), implemented under the Ministry of Rural Development, Govt. of India, is a flagship program in entrepreneurship development in various nonfarm areas for the rural women through a self-help group program (Dey, 2018). Community gives strength to young entrepreneurs' social networks.…”