Geography and Environmental Science, University of Southampton, University Road, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK.
School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, Surgeon's Square, Drummond Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9XP, UK.
Ambio. 2020 Jan;49(1):281-298. doi: 10.1007/s13280-019-01150-9. Epub 2019 Mar 9.
The main determinants of agricultural employment are related to households' access to private assets and the influence of inherited social-economic stratification and power relationships. However, despite the recommendations of rural studies which have shown the importance of multilevel approaches to rural poverty, very few studies have explored quantitatively the effects of common-pool resources and household livelihood capitals on agricultural employment. Understanding the influence of access to both common-pool resources and private assets on rural livelihoods can enrich our understanding of the drivers of rural poverty in agrarian societies, which is central to achieving sustainable development pathways. Based on a participatory assessment conducted in rural communities in India, this paper differentiates two levels of livelihood capitals (household capitals and community capitals) and quantifies them using national census data and remotely sensed satellite sensor data. We characterise the effects of these two levels of livelihood capitals on precarious agricultural employment by using multilevel logistic regression. Our study brings a new perspective on livelihood studies and rural economics by demonstrating that common-pool resources and private assets do not have the same effect on agricultural livelihoods. It identifies that a lack of access to human, financial and social capitals at the household level increases the levels of precarious agricultural employment, such as daily-wage agricultural labour. Households located in communities with greater access to collective natural capital are less likely to be agricultural labourers. The statistical models also show that proximity to rural centres and access to financial infrastructures increase the likelihood of being a landless agricultural labourer. These findings suggest that investment in rural infrastructure might increase livelihood vulnerability, if not accompanied by an improvement in the provisioning of complementary rural services, such as access to rural finance, and by the implementation of agricultural tenancy laws to protect smallholders' productive assets.
农业就业的主要决定因素与家庭获得私人资产的机会以及继承的社会经济分层和权力关系的影响有关。然而，尽管农村研究的建议表明需要采用多层次方法来解决农村贫困问题，但很少有研究定量探讨共同资源和家庭生计资本对农业就业的影响。了解获得共同资源和私人资产对农村生计的影响，可以丰富我们对农业社会农村贫困驱动因素的理解，这对于实现可持续发展途径至关重要。本文基于在印度农村社区进行的参与式评估，区分了两种生计资本（家庭资本和社区资本），并使用国家人口普查数据和遥感卫星传感器数据对其进行量化。我们使用多层次逻辑回归来描述这两个层次的生计资本对不稳定农业就业的影响。我们的研究通过证明共同资源和私人资产对农业生计的影响并不相同，为生计研究和农村经济学带来了新的视角。它表明，家庭一级缺乏人力、金融和社会资本会增加不稳定农业就业的程度，例如日薪农业劳动力。家庭所在社区获得更多集体自然资本的社区，从事农业劳动的可能性较小。统计模型还表明，靠近农村中心和获得金融基础设施的机会增加了成为无地农业劳动者的可能性。这些发现表明，如果农村基础设施投资没有伴随着农村服务的提供得到改善，例如获得农村金融服务，以及实施农业租佃法来保护小农户的生产性资产，那么投资农村基础设施可能会增加生计的脆弱性。
