Evolution of rural family occupations in the state of Paraná, Brazil: 1992-99

Abstracts

Neste artigo, analisaram-se as tabulações especiais dos microdados das PNADs relativas às ocupações das famílias no Estado do Paraná entre 1992 e 1999. Os dados evidenciaram um crescimento das famílias ocupadas em atividades não-agrícolas, a redução das famílias ocupadas em atividades exclusivamente agrícolas e o aumento do número de famílias de aposentados e pensionistas. Pode-se, assim, afirmar que o meio rural paranaense sofre tanto de uma espécie de "urbanização" como também de uma transformação crescente em local de moradia. Informações complementares conduzem a inferir-se que ocorre redução importante no universo denominado agricultura familiar.

famílias; ocupações agrícolas e rurais e Estado do Paraná

Evolution of rural family occupations in the state of Paraná, Brazil: 1992-99

Marcelino de Souza^I; Mauro Eduardo Del Grossi^II

^IProfessor of The Department of Agricultural Education and Rural Extension of The Federal University of Santa Maria - UFSM, Santa Maria - RS. E-mail: [e-mail]

^IIDoctor Researcher in Socioeconomics at IAPAR - Agronomical Institute of Paraná, Londrina - PR, and professor at FANORPI - Faculdade do Norte Pioneiro. E-mail: [e-mail]

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the special processes of the National Home Research Sample’s (PNAD) micro data relative to the occupations of rural families in the state of Paraná between 1992 and 1999. The data show growth in the number of families working in non-agricultural activities, a reduction of the number of families working in exclusively agricultural activities, and growth in the number families headed by pensioners and/or retired people. It is possible to assume that the Paranaense rural environment is experiencing a type of "urbanization" and increasing transformation in the housing area. Further information leads us to conclude that an important reduction in the universe of Brazilian family agriculture is occurring.

Key words: Family, agricultural and rural occupation, Paraná State.

1. Introduction

Rural economic and social research has been fertile over the last few decades. Studies over this period have shown a decline in the importance of agriculture as an economic and social sector while new activities, functions, and occupations have gained importance in rural areas. The agricultural production processes has been reorganized, blurring the link between rural work and agriculture. This reorganization affects distinct groups of the rural population differently.

In a pioneering work, Graziano da Silva (1996) showed that the process of urbanization has affected a significant portion of the rural work force in Brazil’s most important regions, as a large number of rural laborers moved from farms to city suburbs in the 1960s and 1970s. This flow did not diminish in the 80’s, although growth in the number of rural non-agricultural occupations signaled a growing urbanization of Brazil’s countryside, especially in the country’s mid-west and southwest. For example, in São Paulo state, only 2 in 5 rural residents worked in farming in 1990, while the rest of the rural working population was busy in non-farm activities, among them working in agro-industry, trading, home services, and construction.

To better understand changes in rural employment, "Rurbano Project,¹ a large research effort, was initiated. The Project used data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics’ (IBGE) National Home Samples Research (PNAD). Although PNAD data presents several limitations, it still represents the most current and extensive database for analyses of Brazilian family occupations and income.

The objective of this article is to analyze changes in family occupation patterns in the non-metropolitan rural region of the Brazilian state of Parana between 1992 and 1999. In the next section of this article, we present the methodology used in this research. In the third section, we analyze the family occupation data tables; and in the last section, we present our conclusions and their public policy implications.

2. Methodology

IBGE conducts the PNAD survey annually, gathering data using a strict statistical sampling technique. PNAD’s only important limitation is that it does not contain survey information from rural areas of northern Brazil’s huge Amazonian region due to transportation difficulties. We used PNAD rural data because they are not restricted to macro data but include household data.

2.1 The definition of urban and rural

In Brazil, urban perimeters are delimitated by law, and areas outside this perimeter are, by exclusion, rural. The definition of an urban perimeter is not a completely objective determination regulated by demographic considerations, such as the number of inhabitants and public equipment in an area, but includes political considerations brought about by the requirement that municipal governments provide city services to areas within their urban perimeter, such as water, energy, sewage, and health care. What appears urban may be considered rural to reduce municipal costs or incorporated to increase the municipal tax base.

For methodological sampling considerations, IBGE fixes urban and rural areas for a decade, even if the city alters its urban perimeter. In 1992, IBGE introduced new categories of home situations into PNAD to provide more detailed data about the urban-rural continuum. IBGE now has four basic household location categories: metropolitan rural area, metropolitan urban area, non-metropolitan rural area, and non-metropolitan urban area. In this study, we work with information specific to rural non-metropolitan areas.

2.2 The concept of individual and extended family work and work classifications

When the PNAD interviewer arrives at a sample home, information is collected about all residents, such as their ages, places of birth, educational levels, number of children, and employment. The questions refer to the resident’s situation in September of the year under study, preferably, as close as possible to September 30^th.² The researcher generally asks the following employment questions: In the last week of September (of the year under study), who in this residence worked at least 1 hour in their own business, as an employee, or in the family’s business? In what position or occupation? For how long? What was paid?

Before 1992, PNAD did not consider employed people who worked for themselves or their families in production or construction or unpaid workers who worked less than 15 hours per week; these types of occupations were included in the survey in 1992. This change of criteria makes direct comparison between PNAD’s pre 1992 data and post 1992 data impossible. However, we reconstructed our 1981 to 1999 series from the micro data using the 1980s criteria, although, this excluded the enlarged population of possibly employed people.³ This reconstructed series, which we call "Economically Active Population (EAP) usual or strict," was used to distinguish PNAD published pre 1992 data from data published after 1992, which we called "enlarged EAP."⁴

The analyzed unit is the extended family, which is made up of the nuclear family, relatives, and "attached" people who live with the family in the home. We tried to construct a unit of expenditure and a unit of income for members of the extended family that share in the "common fund" of monetary and non-monetary resources. Excluded from the analysis are pensioners who do not contribute any of their pensions into the common fund and the extended family’s domestic employees and relatives. The members of the large family, called "reference people," include the spouses, "children," "relatives," and "attached."

The extended family is classified by activity and position occupied (employer, self-employed, employee, unemployed) and then grouped as follows:

• Employer with Three or more Paid Employees: families with at least one member employing three or more paid permanent workers in their business.

• Employer with up to Two Paid Employees: families with at least one member employing up to two paid permanent workers in their business;

• Self- Employed: a family with no member acting as an employer but with one self-employed member with his own business who depends on family members to contribute labor;

• Employee: families containing no employer or self-employed member but with at least one member working for a wage;

• Unemployed: family containing no employers, no self-employed people, and no wage earners that engaged in no productive activity during the reference week.

The families were also classified by occupation during the reference period as follows:

• Agricultural: all family members worked in agricultural activities as their main occupation;

• Pluriactives: families with at least one member who worked in an agricultural activity and another who worked in a non-agricultural activity, or families with at least one member who declares that he or she has worked in two agricultural activities (main or secondary occupation) in the reference week;

  ⁵

• Non-Agricultural: Families in which one or more members have declared that they worked only in non agricultural activities;

• Unemployed: no family member above the age of 10 worked during the reference period.

3. The evolution of rural family occupations in the State of Paraná: 1992-99

3.1. The evolution of family occupations

Table 1 shows the evolution of family occupations and activities in the considered rural non-metropolitan area. "Self-employed" is the largest family occupational category in all years, about 226 thousand families in 1999. Most of the Self-employed families are in the Agricultural occupational category (72%), but significant numbers of Self-employed" families are Pluriactive.

Table 1
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The second largest group in Table 1 is made up of Employee families. There was significant growth in the number of Employee families over the study period, especially the number of Non-agricultural Employee families. It is noted that there are a large number of Non-agricultural Employee families living in the rural area; however, fewer than the number of Agricultural Employee families. Pluriactive Employee and Non-agricultural Employee families represented 44% of all Employee families living in rural areas of the state of Paraná in 1999.⁸

There is a significant decrease in the number of Self-employed families in the study population, especially Agricultural Self-employed families, between 1992 and 1999. This reduction would have been larger had there not been significant growth in the number of Non-agricultural Self-employed families over the period.

The number of Pluriactive Employer families with up to 2 employees tended to decrease in the study period, indicating that even a combination of activities cannot assure that members of this group will stay in rural areas.

The number of Unemployed families shows strong and significant percentage growth over the study period, approximately 6.4%. This growth is due in great part to steady growth in the number of families comprised of pensioners and/or retired persons, as shown in Table 2.⁹ In 1999, there were 24 thousand families in this segment of the Unemployed families group, 69% of the unemployed families. The 31 thousand Unemployed families represent about 8% of the total number of rural non-metropolitan families in the state.

Table 2
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3.2. Evolution in the number of active people

It is verified that there was a tendency toward decrease in the number of active people in the region over the study period, as shown in Table 3. This tendency can be explained by the significant decline in the number of people classified as Self-employed in Agriculture, even more intense than shown in Table 1. Moreover, we found no significant growth in the number of self-employed working in non-agricultural activities over the study period.

Table 3
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Table 3 also shows a general stabilization in the number of active people in the Employee classification, due mostly to significant growth in the number of employees active in non-agricultural pursuits. If this growth did not occur, the general tendency of reduction in the number of active people in the non-metropolitan rural region would have been much more accentuated.

There was also is a significant decrease in the number of active people classified as Employers with up to Two Paid Employees due to a significant reduction in the number of active people in the Pluriactive category.

3.3 Evolution of the average number of active people in the families

Table 4 introduces a new variable in the analysis: the average number of active people in each extended family according to the typology we have been using.

Table 4
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It is observed that the Self-employed rural family contained the largest average number of active people in 1999, 2.5 active members per family. Employee families contain an average of only 1.7 active members. This suggests that Self-employed families are utilizing family members in the "family business." In addition, we call the attention to the fact that Pluriactive Self-employed families contain the largest average number of active family members.

The tendency towards a general reduction in the average number of people active in the families classified as Self-employed Agricultural and Pluriactive was surprising. We also erroneously expected to find growth in the average number of active people in the Paranaense non metropolitan rural families due to a greater female presence in the non-agricultural work force (house workers). In both cases, the observed reductions could be due to the strong decrease in Brazilian rural agricultural and non-agricultural employment in the 1990s, which was likely to have caused a concurrent reduction in the number of alternative employment opportunities for women, elders, and children, making it difficult for them to become part of the family’s "secondary work force."

Table 4 also shows a steady negative trend in the number of active people in families categorized as Employer with up to Two Paid Employees, due, above all, to a significant decrease in the number of people active in agriculture. This could be the result of the State of Paraná’s drive to reorganize the state’s agricultural sector’s productive system so that it more rapidly incorporates new technologies and implements new production structures to improve its competitive position.

It’s interesting that through the 1990s the number Agricultural Employee families remained stable and showed the smallest percentage reduction in the number of active people per family classification over the study period. This reinforces the hypotheses that family members who had worked on family farms are changing occupations and becoming agricultural employees. In the study area, over the last decade, the average number of active agriculture employees per family decreased less than the average number of active people per non-metropolitan rural family and much less than the average number of active self-employed family members.

The reduction in the number of active people living in Paraná’s non-metropolitan rural families can be partially attributed to continuing demographic change in Brazil: rural families are having fewer children, mimicking a pattern set by urban families.¹⁰ Among other reasons for the decline in number of active residents in the region studied, we highlight the following in order of importance:

• Change in the social and economic contexts (aggravation of the countries economic crisis) constraining the creation of new employment and job vacancies.

• The sudden increase in the number of families with pensioners and/or retired people due to the rural population’s aging;

• An increase of individualization

  ¹¹

  in extended rural families as they become increasingly mononuclear

4. Conclusions and some implications on the formulation of public policies

We believe that transformations within the Brazilian agricultural sector that began in the 1950s have accelerated, creating a "new rural" Paranaense environment that is more delinked from traditional family agriculture. These transformations have been promoted and conditioned by increasing urbanization of the countryside and technological progress in agriculture, the so-called "technological treadmill."¹²

Our analysis of PNAD data regarding family occupations shows that agricultural activities require fewer rural Paranaense workers than were needed 10 years ago. As was previously mentioned, this change is the result of a long-term process sparked by the decreased importance Brazil’s main agricultural products in international trade. This process gained impetus in the late 1990s when conditions imposed by Brazilian economic liberalization sapped its rural sector’s economic dynamism.

Our study of PNAD data made apparent that there was an increase in the number of available non-agricultural activities open to rural family members, though not at the same pace as the decrease in the number of available agricultural activities. The movement of rural workers from agricultural activities to non-agricultural activities calls for a redefinition of the meaning of "rural" in Brazil.

The observed increase in number of retired people and/or pensioners living in rural non-metropolitan areas has public policy implications. As Kageyama & Graziano Silva (1995:20) observe, there is a need that "rural social security be seen not only as a passive policy granting access to certain social rights, but as an active one to fight rural poverty, mainly in the [Brazilian] Northeast" (we would include the socially and economically depressed rural areas of Paraná). The increasing number of pensioner and retired person families in rural Brazil shows that the countryside is gradually becoming a place for retirement and not just a place for work, helping confirm the notion that the rural environment is urbanizing.

Finally, we call attention to evidence that shows important and increasing heterogeneity in the types of rural families, which should have an immediate impact on the design and implementation of future rural policies. If this fact is ignored, a considerable portion of the potential beneficiaries of rural social programs will be excluded. In this sense, public policies need to move beyond their agricultural bias and consider the rural environment as a place with hidden vitality that needs to be addressed with a diversified land reform policy. There is an urgent need in Brazil for non-agriculturally oriented rural policies that stimulate rural development and reach the less fortunate, alienated segments of the rural population, making them citizens and reducing their need to migrate to urban centers.

References

• CARNEIRO, M. J. O ideal rurbano: campo e cidade no imaginário de jovens rurais. In: SILVA, F. C. T. da; SANTOS, R.; COSTA, L. F. de C. Mundo rural e política: ensaios interdisciplinares (Parte II). Rio de Janeiro: Ed. Campus, 1998. Cap. 6, p. 95-117.
• CONFEDERAÇÃO NACIONAL DA AGRICULTURA – CNA et al. Um perfil do agricultor brasileiro. Brasília: CNA, 2000. (Coletânea Estudos Gleba, 9).
• DEL GROSSI, M. E. Evolução das ocupações não-agrícolas no meio rural brasileiro: 1981-1995. Campinas, SP: UNICAMP, 1999. 220 f. Tese (Doutorado em Economia) Instituto de Economia, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Campinas.
• EIKELAND, S. New rural pluriactivity? Household strategies and rural renewal in Norway. Sociologia Ruralis, UK, v. 39, n. 3, p. 359-376, Jul. 1999.
• GRAZIANO DA SILVA, J. A nova dinâmica da agricultura brasileira Campinas, SP: Instituto de Economia da UNICAMP, 1996. 217 p.
• GRAZIANO DA SILVA, J.; DEL GROSSI, M. E. Notas metodológicas. In: CAMPANHOLA, C.; GRAZIANO DA SILVA, J. O novo rural brasileiro: uma análise nacional e regional. Jaguariúna, SP: EMBRAPA, 2000. v.1, p.157-189.
• GRAZIANO DA SILVA, J.; DEL GROSSI, M.E. Rural nonfarm employment and incomes in Brazil: patterns and evolution. World Development, v. 39, n.3, p. 443-453, 2001.
• HOFFMANN, R. Quatro tipos de teste de hipóteses com os dados das PNADs. In: CAMPANHOLA, C.; GRAZIANO DA SILVA, J. O novo rural brasileiro: uma análise nacional e regional. Jaguariúna, SP: EMBRAPA, 2000. v.1, cap. 5, p.137-153.
• KAGEYAMA, A.; GRAZIANO DA SILVA, J. Previdência social rural: avanços e recuos. Revista de Economia e Sociologia Rural, Brasília, v. 33, n. 1, p. 7-21, Jan./Mar. 1995.
• LEONE, E. T. Famílias agrícolas no meio urbano: inserção nas cidades das famílias que continuam vinculadas à agricultura. In: RAMOS, P.; REYDON, B. P. (Orgs.). Agropecuária e agroindústria no Brasil: ajuste, situação atual e perspectivas (Parte III). Campinas, SP: ABRA, 1995. p.151-170.
• SOUZA, Marcelino de Atividades não-agrícolas e desenvolvimento rural no Estado do Paraná Campinas, SP: UNICAMP, 2000. 304 f. Tese (Doutorado em Engenharia Agrícola) Faculdade de Engenharia Agrícola, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Campinas.

1

Information on this project is available at [

http://www.eco.unicamp.br/projetos/rurbano/rurbanw.html]

2

It is known that it underestimates the number of people who consider agricultural activity as their main activity during the year. The new PNADs have researched two periods as a reference: the year and the week before data collection.

3

As presented in the article of Graziano da Silva & Del Grossi (2001).

4

Del Grossi (1999) in his doctoral thesis showed that the difference between these two series-which he called conceptual expansion- were basically formed by retired school teenagers and women involved in housework, like vegetable gardening and small animal husbandry.

5

Only in the case of the group of paid worker families, family’s whose members combined agricultural

activities with other activities in the agricultural sector were considered in theAgricultural family group of and not in the Pluriactive family group. The underlying idea is that if a person is already employed and got another temporary job as a paid agricultural employee, he is still classified as being a paid agricultural employee.

6

For more details, see: Hoffmann, 2000.

7

As recommended by Graziano da Silva and Del Grossi, 2000 (p. 160), observations less frequent are not presented, but when it is added to the kind of family they are considered. Because of this, the sum of the number of Agricultural, Non-agricultural, and Pluriactive families, sometimes, does not correspond to the total number of the kind of families.

8

The inverse situation is shown: in 1999 there were around 68 thousand families of workers living in urban nonmetropolitan areas in Paraná whose members were exclusively working in agricultural activities, and another 32 thousand pluriactive families, that reaches a number of 100 thousand families of workers living in urban areas who have at least one member of the family employed in an agricultural activity. According to Leone (1995:152) this group of families is “in its majority, temporary paid employees—bóias-frias—who do not participate of the urban labor market but wait for seasonal work in agricultural activities.”

9

Based on this information, it is assumed that we are witnessing the aging of the Paranaense rural population. This fact can be confirmed by recent research conducted by CNA (2000), in which it was verified that the average age of the people responsible for agricultural exploration sampled in this research was 52.

10

This explanatory element is from Carneiro (1998:102).

11

According to Eikeland (1999:359), individualization means that “while the children of fishermen and farmers in some generations ago had few options to choose because their lives had already been determined by their social antecedents, sex and place of origin, currently the rural families and family members are equally positioned in the modernity project in which they are included, building their individual identities in a situation full of different groups of rules and opportunities to rebuild a way and a lifestyle”. This means, in the Brazilian case, that extended rural families are increasingly becoming mononuclear – with young people leaving the countryside – and, thus, shrinking the size of extended families that live in the same house.

12

In this case, “technological treadmill” means that farmers have to incorporate more and more technology to increase production to maintain the same profits. The treadmill analogy suggests that technical innovations happen in a very fast pace without improving the farmers bottom line, just like a treadmills.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  13 Dec 2004
• Date of issue
  Dec 2002