Measures of Socio Economic Status of Farmers – A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Socio-economic status (SES) is conceptualized as the social and economic standing or class of an individual or family. Socio-economic status of farmers is an important variable in agricultural social sciences studies. While it is often estimated with various indicators, however, these indicators are inconsistent and irrelevant. An attempt was made to extract the various variables used to measure the socio-economic construct and redefined it into a precise concept. A systematic review of the studies reporting the socio-economic conditions of farmers was performed by adopting the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analysis (PRISMA) best practices method and identified 235 studies. Vote counting was used to generate the determinants of SES in the selected studies. It was observed that the measures of SES in agricultural studies were scattered and obscure. From the extracted measures, based on the SES concept, 39 variables were identified, redefined, and relevant indicators were classified into two groups: social and economic status. These include their education, occupation, income per capita, expenditure, savings, land ownership, livestock status, indebtedness, area under crops and material possession in house and farm, housing conditions, social participation, family size, caste/race, marital status, dependency ratio, extension contact, and mass media participation. The above-mentioned variables under the social and economic standing of farmers could be adopted by the researchers, and policymakers in Asian and African sub-continents based on the areas of interest in studying the SES of farmers.