Occupational Structure in Rural Uttar Pradesh:What Changes the Recent NSSO Show?

Abstract

The rural economy had undergone major restructuring which led to an increase in the share of casual labour in the non-farm sector accompanied by continuous decline in the share of self-employment and regular wage workers. This paper tries to explore determinants of workforce structure with respect to status and sector. On the basis of multinominal regression model it tries to comprehend NSSO's household survey data to analyse factors which impede upon the choice of employment of workers in rural Uttar Pradesh. The model incorporates variables such as total assets (landholding size), social groups, religion, educational level, age (which reflects upon the experience in the labour market) and other regional factors like backwardness which influence the workers. Various earlier studies have pointed at the existing structure of employment in rural areas like the choice of type of employment depends on factors like caste and religion rather than human capital and physical capital of households (Reddy and Kumar, 2006). However other studies lay focus on the fact that even rural labour market has been vibrant in response to human capital levels i.e. better educated workers specialise in knowledge-intensive non-agriculture sector with high levels of income, while the illiterate depends on agriculture sector. Keeping these perspectives in mind this paper tries to explore relative influence of educational levels, physical capital and socio-economic background of workers on their choice of employment types.