Analysis of farm and non-farm occupational choices among youth in rural Tanzania
The agricultural sector in rural Tanzania is practiced more by elderly people than by the youth. This study examined the determinants of youth occupational choice between farming and non-farming in rural Tanzania. Specifically, the study intended to establish the trend of farming and non-farming occupation choices among youth; analyze the determinants of farming and non-farming occupational choices, and to analyze the impact of youth occupational choice on their subjective welfare. The study used National Panel Surveys of 2008/9, 2010/11, 2012/13, and 2014/15. The determinants of occupational choices were analyzed using the logistic regression model while the effect of occupational choice on subjective welfare was estimated using treatment-effect estimation with the nearest-neighbor estimator. The findings show that there was a sustained drop out of youth from farming occupations from the year 2008/09 to 2014/15. Furthermore, education level was found to influence the dropping out of youth from farming to non-farming occupations while land ownership motivates youth to join farming occupations. There was no statistically significant difference between the subjective welfare of youth engaging in farming and those in non-farming occupations. The study recommends the following: introducing agriculture as a subject in primary schools, stabilizing farm products’ markets, changing the perception of youth towards farming, and encouraging a land tenure system that allows youth’s full ownership of farming land.
Related Articles
Workshop Report: 28th Annual Research Workshop – 2024 “Pursuit for Sustained Growth and Trade Expansion”
REPOA’s Annual Research Workshop (ARW) continues to be the longest running and largest research workshop held in Tanzania by a Tanzanian organisation, where researchers, research users, and development stakeholders meet to discuss research findings, their associated implications for development policy in Tanzania and propose areas of further strategic research. The 28th REPOA’s ARW was conducted […]
Factors influencing Online Citizen Engagement at the Local Level in Tanzania
The adoption of e-participation adoption is found to be conditioned by the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) environment, government norms, ICT literacy and cost, and awareness among citizens and LLG leaders. The research implies that DOI power will increase when innovation testing is also included in the redesigning/ restructuring stage of the organisation’s innovation-decision process. […]
Democratisation in Tanzania: Re-examining citizens’ preferences for political party systems after 1992
The findings suggest an evolution of popular views on multipartism over time in contrast to reservations expressed to Justice Nyalali’s Commission in 1991. It is possible that, over time, many citizens have grown to prefer pluralism to a single party system because the speculated violence and societal division have not occurred. Also, they trust both […]
Motorcycle taxi riding and crimes in the urban settings of Dar es Salaam and Pwani Regions – Tanzania
The study reveals differences in crimes between regions. Findings further reveal that, while different initiatives are used to cope with crimes by both riders and their customers, sometimes motorcycle riders have brutally assaulted people they suspect to be criminals, even without any proof, which escalates the problem. As for customers in Dar es Salaam, the […]