Participation of rural households in farm, non-farm and pluri-activity: Evidences from India

Farm households diversify their activities to supplement their income from outside the agriculture: it is an important adaptive strategy to increase family income, spread risk, stabilize salaries, reduce income inequalities to cope with the income differentials etc. This paper analyses the farm household’s allocation decision by considering three possibilities, viz. working only in farm, taking up only non-farm activity and working in multi-activities (pluri-activity). The study uses India Human Development Survey data and employs generalized multinomial logit model to analyse the decision of the farm households to participate in diverse activities. The results show that old farmers with smaller land holdings, especially in SC and ST categories, are pluri-active to supplement the household income. It is interesting to find that the older age group members are more pluri-active than the youth in the household who either specialize or pursue higher education. Further, the women of the household tend to work more on farm than taking up other activities.