LABOUR AND POVERTY FOR THE GREEK AGRICULTURAL POPULATION, BEFORE AND DURING THE ECONOMIC CRISIS

Abstract

Agricultural population of Greece has been in the center of a political and economical turmoil for many years. Yet, it has not been investigated enough as to its employment and living conditions. This article is one of the first attempts to describe the demographical characteristics of the agricultural population in Greece. It then proceeds to the exploration of employment conditions of this population compared to the non-agricultural population of Greece. Finally, living conditions and poverty of agricultural population are estimated for specific subgroups, before and after the initiation of the current economic crisis, drawing interesting results. The analysis shows that agricultural population still constitutes a great part of Greek population, although diminished by the crisis. It contains not only farmers but, to a great extend, employees working in non agricultural sectors and occupations. The most interesting and striking of the results are related to poverty and living conditions, which prove to be much worst for agricultural compared to the rest of the Greek population. On average poverty rates are twice as much as the rest of the population and the early years of the crisis barely changed this image. The employees that work outside the agricultural sector are in better shape in terms of poverty, something that reveals and justifies the long term tendency of the agricultural population to abandon agricultural life.

Keywords

• labour
• poverty rate
• agricultural population
• greece
• economic crisis
• demographics