Page 327 - Ranah Studi Agraria: Penguasaan Tanah dan Hubungan Agraris

Ranah Studi Agraria

sectors of household income. The former indicates the mix of
three major income sources–farming, farm laboring and non
agricultural–from which each household derived its income
and employment over the past year. This measure is particu-
22
larly useful because it provides one overall indicator of the
diversification of employment activities for each household.
It does not, however, indicate the relative contribution of each
activity to total income and must therefore be supplemented
by data on major and minor income sources. Moreover, it is
not possible from this measure to examine household differ-
ences in occupational structure by sex and age characteris-
tics; unfortunately we were not able at this stage to incorpo-
rate data on the participation and major occupation under-
taken by household heads, the wives of household heads and
other family members.
From the outset we should mention that respondent an-
swers to the question on major income source probably tended
to overstate the importance of farming, despite interviewer
probes on the approximate net income received from each
source. This way a consequence of the relatively higher status
of farming, especially compared to farm laboring, and a ten-
dency for landowning household to always portray themselves

22 Data was collected on the five major family income sources ranked
according to estimated contribution to total family income for the
rice growing year 1982/83, beginning in the wet season cultivation
period in 1982. Our measure of family income status indicates the
mix of the three major sources only, since a relatively small pro-
portion of household (less than ten percent) reported more than
three sources.

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