Labour Supply of Cultivator and Labour Households: Insights From a Longitudinal Survey in Vidarbha, Maharashtra

Sarthak Gaurav, Rahul Kumar Singh and Thiagu Ranganathan ()
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Sarthak Gaurav: Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT Bombay)
Rahul Kumar Singh: Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT Bombay)
Thiagu Ranganathan: Centre for Development Studies (CDS)

The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, 2024, vol. 67, issue 4, No 8, 1117-1140

Abstract: Abstract This paper presents evidence on the labour supply of agricultural households in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra, a predominantly rainfed region where agricultural households are dependent on cotton and soybean cultivation. Using panel data of cultivator and labour households over the period from 2019 to 2021 that included the COVID-19 pandemic, our paper adds to the limited empirical evidence on dynamics of labour supply in rural labour markets in general and rainfed regions in particular. Our study finds considerable gendered division in the labour supply as well as in the labour market adjustments of households to cope with income shocks. With the burden of the pandemic and unseasonal rainfall in 2020, cultivator households primarily shifted labour supply from agricultural wage employment to non-farm employment while labour households increased their non-farm labour supply without significantly altering their agricultural wage employment. Among the cultivator households, labour supply response varied considerably by landholding size. The paper also underlines the lack of availability of remunerative and stable non-farm wage employment for agricultural households in the study region.

Keywords: Labour supply; Agricultural wage employment; Non-farm diversification; Vidarbha; COVID-19; India (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J43 O12 O13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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DOI: 10.1007/s41027-024-00533-1

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