The Relationship Between the Age of Farmers and Agricultural Labor Productivity in Taiwan
Date Issued
2009
Date
2009
Author(s)
Liu, Cheng-Dow
Abstract
Recent decades, ageing population became an important issue both in developed and developing countries. The situation of ageing population in Taiwan is getting serious, especially in agricultural sector. Many researchers suggested that ageing farmers could have negative impacts on agricultural production, but few of them could provide promising findings by using quantitative methods. Since labor is one of the key factors affecting the development of agriculture, it is important to realize the age structure of farmers and further analyze its correlation with agricultural labor productivity. For this reason, the purpose of this research is to investigate the age structure of Taiwan’s farmers and to analyze the relationship between farmers’ age and the labor productivity.995 and 2005 census data and regression analysis are used to investigate the age structure and its relationship with labor productivity. The results show that the ageing issue for Taiwan’s agricultural sector is more serious than ever. In 2005, more than 18.61 percent of farmers are older than 65 years old, which is 7.24 percent higher than 10 years before. Moreover, the life cycle effect was found in Taiwan’s agricultural labor productivity, and its peak is between 40 and 50 years old. Our findings also suggest that, in general, male farmers, living in eastern part of Taiwan, or growing mushroom / flowers have higher productivities. Besides, Operating areas are owned most by ageing farmers who have low labor productivities, and the older the farmers are, the more lands they have. The young farmers who have high labor productivities can’t get enough lands to cultivate, so that the whole productivity can’t increase. It’s also the main reason that ageing farmers affect negatively on agriculture.
Subjects
Ageing
Agricultural labor productivity
Operative area
Farmer’s age distribution
Life cycle
SDGs
Type
thesis
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