Income Distribution And Its Inequality On Sample Households In Kuchai Block Of West Singhbhum District
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Date
2001
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Birsa Agricultural University, Ranchi
Abstract
The last few decades have brought a perceptible transformation of agriculture in India with increases income to the farmers. Despite increases income there has been growing concern with rural poverty and unemployment given the unequal distribution of land, it is being realized that growth in agriculture brings disparity in the distribution of income among the farmers .Studies on income distribution has thus drawing greater attention of the economist now than even before. Further farmers households expenditures depends not only on farm income but total income of house hold, Analyzing these income sources and disaggregating their impact on income distribution can prove to be meaningful in estimation the direction of change in inequality in income distribution due to change in income from a source.
Keeping in view those facts the present study was undertaken in Kuchai Block of west Singhbhum district with objectives of studying the distribution pattern of farm and total income, extent of variation in income due to adoption of improved agriculture practices, to assess the various sources of income of selected households and lastly to assess the contribution of different income source to total income inequality on selected households. The analysis was carried over on 30 randomly selected farm households from two selected villages from the Kuchai Block. Lorenz curve and Gini concentration ratio were used to measure the extent of income variation in farm as well as total income of selected households. A decomposition analysis was carried over to disaggregate the income inequality by source which helped to estimate the marginal impact of each source to total income inequality.
The results obtained from the study revealed that agricultural income is distributed relatively more equally than the total income of the households studies in the two villages of the selected block. This indicates that the new agricultural technology has produced more or less similar results on different size groups of farm households as far as distribution of farm income is concerned. Skewness in the distribution pattern has been observed in the income more than in the farm business income.
The extent of inequalities has been obtained by calculating Gini concentration ration. The Concentration ratio of the farm income distribution is computed as 0.15 whereas for total income relatively higher value of the ration has been computed as 0.33. The two ratios income computed for farm income and total income distribution on the set of farm house hold are compared together on the basis of Lorenz curve. The farm income distribution can be regarded relatively uniform between the farm households than the distribution of total income.
The analysis of income sources indicated that the most of the farm households earned income from more than one source. Maximum number of farmers are engaged in agriculture and their contribution to total income was observed up to 47 percent of their total earnings.
It was further indicated that the distribution of income from non –farm sources are highly in egalitarian than farm sources. Contribution of agriculture to total inequality is highest 26 % because of its maximum contribution to total income and highest degree of correlation with total income. In non –farm source contribution of salary to total income was highest 21 percent .All the income source other than agriculture and nonfarm wages earning appeared to be contributors to the inequality increasing in total income. The relative inequality coefficient for the income source of agriculture and non-farm wage earning were all observed to have income inequality decreasing effects on the selected farm households.