The income penalty of farming and fishing: results from a sibling approach

Abstract

This study explores an apparently paradoxical finding in farming and fishing: low economic returns, but a high rate of occupational transmission across generations of farmers and fishers. Using a sibling model containing 11,924 children of Swedish farmers and fishers in 2012, we estimate that farmers' sons who became farmers received 28 per cent lower income than same-sex siblings with a career outside farming. For farmers' daughters and fishers' sons, the income gap was about 22 per cent relative to same-sex siblings. Our conclusion is that the decision to become a fisher or a farmer is largely determined by non-pecuniary factors.

Keywords

income penalty; agriculture; farming; fishing; intergenerational

Published in

European Review of Agricultural Economics
2016, volume: 43, number: 3, pages: 383-400

SLU Authors

• Blomquist, Johan

  • Department of Economics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Waldo, Staffan

  • Department of Economics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

UKÄ Subject classification

Economics

Publication identifier

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/erae/jbv036

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/76283