Suchergebnisse

AbstractThis article investigates the presence of a farm–nonfarm income gap along the income distribution in the European Union. Our findings show that the income disparity between farm and nonfarm households varies at the opposite poles of the distribution within and between countries. On average, farm households in the lowest quartile are worse off than nonfarm households in the same quartile, whilst farm households in the highest quartile are better off than their nonfarm counterpart. We also provide some evidence on the time dynamics of the farm–nonfarm households' income gap by looking at its evolution after the Great Recession. Finally, the policy implications stemming from the results are presented. In particular, the importance of re‐directing the Common Agricultural Policy public support in two main directions: from the richest farm households to the poorest farm households, to reduce within countries' inequality, and from the richest countries to the poorest countries, to reduce between countries' inequality.

AbstractThe paper compares the income conditions of farm and nonfarm households in the whole EU and within three geographical groups of countries for the period 2008–2016. Overcoming the simple comparison of raw means of the groups, we estimate the farm/nonfarm income differentials by using Regression Adjusted and Covariate Matching techniques, which allow to control for observable characteristics among groups. Three innovative features of our analysis are that we account for the whole income of farm households (i.e. not only farm income), for the presence of in‐kind incomes from self‐consumption of produced goods and imputed rents from properties, and for the complex survey design. We find that an income differential still exists but with relevant differences across countries and along the period. Most of it is due to differences in the households' characteristics. Hence, comparing raw means of the two groups can be misleading. Nonmonetary sources of income play a not negligible role, improving the relative position of farm households. The role of agricultural and rural policy is discussed in the light of results.

National and international governments aim to promote the responsible management of the natural capital but measuring its contribution to economic growth is still a challenging exercise. The natural capital supports a plurality of environmental functions whereas the economic growth is frequently measured by aggregated indicators. In this paper, we propose an extended version of the Genuine Saving macro indicator to account for water and soil depletion. Further, as natural capital is spatially heterogeneous we estimate Genuine Saving for Italy for the period 2000–2015 at the regional level. Whilst the case study produces specific results for Italy the methodological framework is broadly applicable to other states. The Italian comparison shows that soil and water provide an absolute change of roughly 1% of the GS but average relative regional variations are between 5 and 33% of GDP, showing that the geographical scale of sustainability analysis is a crucial element for responsible management of national assets. The methodological contribution suggests that the Genuine Saving can support policy makers in developing targeted policies for sustainable growth.

First published online: 17 August 2019 ; National and international governments aim to promote the responsible management of the natural capital but measuring its contribution to economic growth is still a challenging exercise. The natural capital supports a plurality of environmental functions whereas the economic growth is frequently measured by aggregated indicators. In this paper, we propose an extended version of the Genuine Saving macro indicator to account for water and soil depletion. Further, as natural capital is spatially heterogeneous we estimate Genuine Saving for Italy for the period 2000–2015 at the regional level. Whilst the case study produces specific results for Italy the methodological framework is broadly applicable to other states. The Italian comparison shows that soil and water provide an absolute change of roughly 1% of the GS but average relative regional variations are between 5 and 33% of GDP, showing that the geographical scale of sustainability analysis is a crucial element for responsible management of national assets. The methodological contribution suggests that the Genuine Saving can support policy makers in developing targeted policies for sustainable growth.