Structure of Assets among Households in Rural Punjab: An Empirical Analysis

Abstract

The present work is an attempt to study the structure of household assets across the categories in rural Punjab. It reveals that the value of durable assets is the highest, followed by those of farm assets, financial assets, livestock assets and non-agricultural land in that order among the sampled households. It has been observed that there is direct relationship between farm-size and possession of different household assets in absolute terms. But in relative terms, it has inverse relationship between farm-size and holding of durable as well as livestock assets. In case of non-farmer households, the value of durable assets is the highest among the rural artisans, followed by non-agricultural and agricultural labourer household categories. There is direct relationship between having different farm assets and farm-size among all the farmer household categories. The value of farm assets is the highest for rural artisan household category as compared to other non-farmer categories. It is interesting to note that in relative terms, the average households from medium farmer category has the higher share of financial assets a proportion out of total assets. It has been observed that the large farmer has an expected the highest share of non-agricultural land and other assets.