Rural non-farm employment and incomes in Brazil: Patterns and evolution

In decades past, a large contingent of workers left farms and small towns to move to the large cities of Brazil. But in the 1990s, not only has this flow subsided, but one even observes an “urbanization” of rural areas via a large increase in nonfarm activities in rural areas during the 1980s and 1990s, especially in the Center-West and Southeast regions of Brazil. Exclusively agricultural rural households have lower incomes than “multiactive households” (those with activities in both the farm and nonfarm sectors) and than nonfarm rural households. One even notes a significant reduction in the number of purely farm households over 1992–97 in all regions of the country.