Determinants of family income in rural areas: a review

Abstract

This work analyzes a group of factors that are decisive to formation of rural families’ income and its reproduction level. Recent studies demonstrate that the transformations in the Brazilian rural space, with to growing diversification in the ways of people’s occupation and alterations in the sources of family income, turning them pluriactivity. This new dynamics given by the increase of the non-agricultural occupations has as consequences that the analysis focus centered in the farm not more contemplates the need of understanding of the current phenomena. Then, the family as unit of analysis and its inter-relations with the farm production and the external environment should be consider to the evaluations of the social and economic reproduction. It’s important to consider that the family income is resulted of different occupations forms and activities developed by their members as result to a family strategy defined from the established relations in the ambit of production, of market and of external environment that define its reproduction level. This study is an effort of theoretical proposition that considers the inter-relations that happens among the family in the rural and urban ambit, in the intention of explaining the different income origins and its strategy of family reproduction.