Abstract
As the share of agriculture in gross domestic product decreases with economic growth, so does its share in employment. Over time this leads to a shift in the rural occupational structure toward different non-agricultural and non-farm activities. A vibrant rural non-farm sector has the potential of reducing disguised unemployment in agriculture, forced migration toward urban centers, rural poverty, and rural income inequality. But the extent of success depends on whether such livelihood diversification is driven by growth-related ‘pull’ factors or distress-driven ‘push’ factors. Based on data from the quinquennial surveys on ‘Employment and Unemployment Situation in India’ carried out by the National Sample Survey Office and other official sources, this paper analyzes the determinants of non-farm employment among the female workforce in rural India, segregated by industrial subsectors and employment status, during the two post-reform decades 1990–2010. The results point toward some existence of distress factors and much region-specific heterogeneity in the dynamics involved.
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Notes
- 1.
The newly formed states, namely Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, and Uttarakhand, have been merged with their parent states Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, and Uttar Pradesh, respectively, to maintain data comparability over the period.
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Dhara, A., Chatterjee, B. (2017). Non-farm Employment Among Rural Women: Trend and Determinants. In: Neogi, C., Bhandari, A., Ghosh, S. (eds) Women's Entrepreneurship and Microfinance. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-4268-3_5
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