Does Size of Landholding Contributing Highest Share to Consumption Expenditure Inequalities among Agricultural Households?
M. Areef *
Agricultural College, Acharya N. G. Ranga Agricultural University, Bapatla –522101, India.
Y. Radha
Agricultural College, Acharya N. G. Ranga Agricultural University, Bapatla –522101, India.
V. S. Rao
Agricultural College, Acharya N. G. Ranga Agricultural University, Bapatla –522101, India.
P. V. S. Gopal
Agricultural College, Acharya N. G. Ranga Agricultural University, Bapatla –522101, India.
K. S. R. Paul
Agricultural College, Acharya N. G. Ranga Agricultural University, Bapatla –522101, India.
K. Suseela
Agricultural College, Acharya N. G. Ranga Agricultural University, Bapatla –522101, India.
S. Rajeswari
Agricultural College, Acharya N. G. Ranga Agricultural University, Bapatla –522101, India.
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
This study aims to identify factors that contribute to consumption expenditure inequality and employed the regression based inequality decomposition (RBID) method. Used primary data on agricultural households’ consumption expenditure for the agricultural year 2018-19 in the south coastal region of Andhra Pradesh. The results compared across the landholding size wise category and concluded that monthly income, dependency ratio, non-farm income-earning members and size of household contributed highest percentage share to total inequality for food, non-food and total consumption expenditure. At the aggregate (overall farmers) level highest percentage of inequality share contributed by monthly income and followed by the size of landholding. There is a need to focus on control the size of households by narrowing the dependency ratio and enhance the monthly income of agricultural households by providing employment opportunities in both farm and non-farm income-earning activities.
Keywords: Dependency ratio, monthly income, size of landholding, regression-based inequality decomposition and consumption expenditure