Izvorni znanstveni članak
Economic Development and the Agrarian Population and its Income (A comparative study of historical experience)
Vladimir Stipetić
Sažetak
Using the historical and comparative methods, the author tries to prove that the process of giving up farming as an occupation is a world phenomenon which is due to economic development and in direct proportion to its dynamics. Analysing the pattern of this process in economically developed countries in the 19th and 20th c., he concludes that the process is governed by identical laws. Finding that a high level of the development of productive forces is connected with a low percentage of agrarian population, and that a low level of economic development is connected with a high percentage of agrarian population, the author believes that the rate at which the proportion of farmers in a country's or region's total or active population decreases, offers a rough but suitable criterion of its development, provided the necessary time series are available.
In examining the comparative level of income of the agrarian population the author finds that farmers everywhere have a lower personal than the rest of the population and believes this difference to provide the motive power which makes the farmers give up their traditional occupation. However despite the fact that this phenomenon has been observed, a consistent theoretical explanation on a world scale is still lacking, although numerous hypotheses for its explanation have been put forward. In economically undeveloped countries important factors in this respect are agrarian overpopulation and the fact that the marginal labour productivity of a considerable proportion of the population is zero or even negative. However, this phenomenon can hardly account for the comparatively unfavorablerelations of incomes in agriculture in certain economically highly developed countries.
Ključne riječi
Hrčak ID:
118768
URI
Datum izdavanja:
10.6.1969.
Posjeta: 844 *