Psychological Characteristics and Non-farm Livelihood Options of Rural Youth in Jabalpur District of Madhya Pradesh India

Abstract

Many rural youth are faced with difficulty of maintaining livelihoods and consequently, poverty remains pervasive among them. The importance of income generating activities to rural livelihood cannot be over-emphasized. The paper examined the involvement of rural youth in non-farm income generating activities and their psychological characteristics as well as the relationship between their psychological characteristics and their involvement in non-farm income generating activities. Multi-stage random sampling was used to collect data from 247 respondents through interview schedule and data was categorized with mean and standard deviation while Pearson Product Moment Correction (PPMC) was used to test relationships. The results revealed that majority of the respondents had medium risk orientation, economic motivation and innovativeness while first degree and business were the aspired educational attainment and occupation by majority respectively. The findings also showed that majority of rural youth were conservative and fatalistic. Petty trading and pottery were the most and least ranked income generating activities participated by the respondents. Achievement motivation (r = 0.455, P < 0.01), risk orientation (r = 0.364, P < 0.01), economic motivation (r = 0.446, P < 0.01) and innovativeness (r = 0.345, P < 0.01) had a significant positive relationships with involvement in non-farm income generating activities whereas educational aspiration (r = -0.222, P < 0.01), occupational aspiration (r = -0.133, P < 0.05), conservatism-liberalism (r = -0.407, P < 0.01) and fatalism-scienticism (r = -0.327, P < 0.01) had significant and negative relationships with involvement in non-farm income generating activities. Governmental and non-governmental organizations should take into consideration all non-farm income generating activities engaged in by rural youth as well as the above psychological variables when initiating and embarking on programmes targeted at improving their livelihoods.