A Cross-Country Comparison of Rural Income Generating Activities

By B. Davis, P. Winters, G. Carletto, K. Covarrubias, Esteban J. Quiñones, A. Zezza, K. Stamoulis, C. Azzarri, Stefania DiGiuseppe. 2010

434 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Summary This paper uses a newly constructed cross-country database composed of comparable income aggregates to examine the full range of income generating activities carried out by rural households. The analysis paints a clear picture of multiple activities across rural space in countries on all four continents, though less so in the included African countries. For most countries the largest share of income stems from off-farm activities, and the largest share of households has diversified sources of income. Diversification, not specialization, is the norm. Nevertheless, agricultural sources of income remain critically important for rural livelihoods in all countries.

Subfields: General Agricultural and Biological Sciences, Safety Research, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/689251f30940f6640821e2f40ef2042ff5c782bb

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In General Agricultural and Biological Sciences

In Safety Research

In Sociology and Political Science

Citations in the corpus

Reliability of Recall in Agricultural Data (2011, background): “Analysis of the Rural Income Generating Activities (RIGA) study shows that, while non-farm activities are increasing in importance, the vast majority of rural African households remain heavily dependent on agriculture, with on-farm sources of income ranging from 59 to 78 percent of total income (Dav”
Crop diversification, dietary diversity and agricultural income: empirical evidence from eight developing countries (2014, background): “…have shown that patterns, regularities and common features constantly emerge, even when conducted in different agroecological, institutional and socioeconomic conditions (for example Davis et al. 2010; Winters et al. 2010; Pica-Ciamarra et al. 2011; Zezza et al. 2011; Zezza and Tasciotti 2010).”
Environmental Income and Rural Livelihoods: A Global-Comparative Analysis (2014, background): “3%) in the PEN sample are close to the shares of 16 country-level rural income surveys presented in Davis et al. (2010; 30.0% and 10.3%, respectively). The total wage share in the PEN sample is lower (15.2% compared to 25.3%) than in the Davis et al. (2010) sample, possibly because our sites tend to”
Heterogeneous impact of livelihood diversification on household welfare: Cross-country evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa (2019, background): “In the case of sub-Saharan regions and, particularly in the three countries of interest, the evidence of such mechanisms is confirmed by the increasing income shares of non-farm activities in rural households as a response to low returns in traditional core activities (Barrett et al., 2001; Block & ”
Quantifying rural livelihood strategies in developing countries using an activity choice approach (2013, background): “Diversification is the norm (Davis et al., 2010)—no household relies on one or two income sources alone.”
Household Livelihood Strategies and Implication for Poverty Reduction in Rural Areas of Central Nepal (2017, background): “Rural households combine a diverse set of income generating and social activities and construct a portfolio of livelihood activities to meet and, if possible, to enhance better livelihood outcomes [1].”
Shocks, Consumption and Income Diversification in Rural Ethiopia (2012, background): “Most empirical evidence on labour or non-farm income responses to shocks comes from Asia, and Davis et al. (2010) find that in Africa diversification tends to be lower than in other continents.”