Labour Market Activities of Rural Households in developing countries

Sylvester Jatta

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Abstract Using national data from 14 representative developing countries, this paper explores rural wage employment and its potential as a mechanism for improving the living standards of the rural poor. The analysis suggests that the sector of employment (agricultural or non-agricultural) and the overall household livelihood strategy appear to be of limited importance in determining whether a household uses wage employment as a pathway out of poverty. Rather, high-productivity wage employment appears to be linked to the underlying assets of the household and its individual members. In particular, the evidence points to educational and infrastructure investment as critical for providing opportunities in the labour market that lead to higher wages. The analysis also suggests that gender is very important for participation in labour markets as well as wages earned in those markets, indicating that special attention be given to the gender consequences of any labour policy.

Keywords: Key words: rural labour market; mechanism; assets; educational and infrastructure investment; labour markets; gender; pathway out of poverty; livelihood strategies; non-agricultural employment. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: R00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-04-25
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/46543/1/MPRA_paper_46542.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:46543

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().