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INFORMATION ON FARMERS‘ INCOMES: DATA FROM INLAND REVENUE SOURCES
Author(s) -
Hill Berkeley
Publication year - 1984
Publication title -
journal of agricultural economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.157
H-Index - 61
eISSN - 1477-9552
pISSN - 0021-857X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1477-9552.1984.tb01175.x
Subject(s) - revenue , earnings , agriculture , farm income , personal income , distribution (mathematics) , business , agricultural economics , household income , investment (military) , survey data collection , income in kind , economics , income distribution , labour economics , gross income , agricultural science , economic growth , public economics , finance , geography , inequality , mathematics , law , political science , mathematical analysis , archaeology , state income tax , statistics , politics , tax reform , environmental science
The most commonly quoted information on UK farm incomes comes from the Farm Management Survey. However, this Survey does not embrace the income farmers receive from non‐farm sources, and its coverage of very small farms is not good. For many income studies, an attractive alternative source of information, newly available, is the agricultural and horticultural subsets of the Survey of Personal Incomes, conducted annually by the Inland Revenue. This paper comments on the SPI results for 1978/79. While there are reservations about the classification employed and the income concept adopted, the SPI is nevertheless an important new source of data, covering income received by farming couples and individuals from self‐employment, from employment and from investment. Overall, earned income constituted 83 per cent of the Total Income of farmers in 1978/79; business profits (including those of wives) formed less than two‐thirds of the total, illustrating the importance of including non‐farm sources in any assessment of farmers' income position. When classified by income size, agricultural incomes are seen to figure disproportionately high among the upper income groups of the community. The earnings of farmers' wives are discussed and the SPI income‐distribution compared with that from the FMS. Ways of exploiting this newly‐available data source are explored.