Sources of family income and their effects on family income inequality: a study of fish farmers in Tripura, India

Abstract

An improved understanding of the sources of income and income distribution provides instructive insights into food insecurity and poverty, helping policy makers in the developing world to formulate new strategies for overcoming them. This paper analyses different sources of family income of fish farmers, and determines the impact that various income sources had on the overall level of family income inequality in the South Tripura district of Tripura in 2004–2005. Using decomposition of inequality by source, we examined how changes in particular income components affected overall inequality. Policies that increase fish yield in the study area have an important role to play in reducing poverty with negligible increase in income inequality. Increased income share from government jobs in lower income groups could play the dual role of alleviating poverty among relatively poor fish farmers and reducing income inequality among fish farming households in the study area.