The role of non agricultural rural employment in rural communities: a case study in Tepeji del río, Hidalgo México.

Abstract

Rural families are being increasingly incorporated to activities
different to the agricultural ones, since these activities represent
an important support to compensate the low agricultural incomes.
On the other hand, the tighter interrelation between the
countryside and the city facilitates the participation in the
employment market and in the formal and informal commerce,
widening the development capacities of the rural economies, and
causing a decrease on the relative importance of the agricultural
income within the total rural income. The rural income is no
longer equivalent to the agricultural income in the Mexican
countryside. In this essay we analyze the role of the non
agricultural rural employment (NARE) through the results
obtained by means of interviews and the application of a survey
to 70 families of the communities of Sta. María Magdalena and
La Cañada de Madero, both located in the municipality of Tepeji
del Río de Ocampo in the state of Hidalgo, México. Also, the
different sources of non agricultural employment and the income
deriving from them, which represents more than 84% of the total
income, are examined. lncome obtained through migration is
significative for some families; nevertheless, the remunerations
coming from local markets have the highest compensating impact
of the low agricultural income. The households with better actives
of human capital have higher capacity to assign their members to
different markets; hence, the diversification of employments occurs
in the households with better demographic characteristics. The
children of common land owners benefit more than their parents
of non agricultural employments, since age and schooling level
are key factors to accede to better remunerated employments
outside agriculture.