Assessing Human Development of Paddy Farmers Compared to Non- Farmers through Indexing of Health, Assets and Education: A Case Study in Kurunegala District of Sri Lanka

This paper addresses the methodological issues concerning construction of composite indices to compare human development of farming and non-farming communities in Kurunegala District. Three composite indices were developed separately for two communities with respect to Health, Assets and Education. Similar income groups were considered in order to facilitate the comparison. To develop three indices, the Principal Component Analysis was performed separately for each set of indicators, Health, Assets and Education in paddy farmer and nonfarmer community. The study revealed that all aggregate index values of paddy farmers were lower than those of non-farmer index values in Kurunagala District. The indices developed in the present study would be useful to assess the level of human development in similar occurrences. Further, it highlights that the values of three indices obtained for paddy farmers are generally lower than those of non-farmers in Kurunegala district. The findings based on the indices can be used by the government and policy makers as baseline information to develop programs to uplift the living standards of farmer community.


INTRODUCTION
Paddy sector plays a vital role in the Sri Lankan economy which contributes about 2.9 percent to the total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country (Central Bank Annual Report, 2008).
Department of Agribusiness Management, Faculty of Agriculture and Plantation Management, Wayamba University of Sri Lanka, Makandura, Gonawila (NWP). * rabeynayake@hotmail.com Further, it provides livelihood for over 0.88 million farm families island wide. Out of the total labor force of the country, nearly 32 percent is engaged in agriculture related activities (Department of Census and Statistics, 2008) and the rice sector itself employs almost half of the total agricultural labor force.
Historically, paddy farmers and their households had played a key role in the development efforts in Sri Lanka. As a result, various governments in power, especially in the post-independence era, have offered various incentives and subsidies of different nature to uplift the paddy production of the country (Adhikarinayake, 2005). However, growth of an economy in monetary terms cannot be considered as a reasonable measure to assess the development, because the performance of a community cannot be seen as a mere sum of its economic growth. For example, GDP of a country cannot be considered as a reasonably good measurement to determine the nation's wealth and economic performance over time as it does not capture certain aspects such as health, education and other related socio-economic conditions. In turn, the indices such as Physical Quality of Life Index (PQLI) and Human Development Index (HDI) play a better role in this respect (Shukla and Kakar, 2006). However, estimation of which at the sectoral or community level is complex exercise mainly because of the paucity of data and non-existence of well-defined linkages. Consequently, in recent years, there has been considerable growth in the use of well conceptualized aggregates or composite indicators at various levels in order to assess performances between and across countries, in general, and communities and sectors, in particular. The main advantage of developing an index is that it contracts a large number of indicators into a smaller number of "units" that represent the real situation so that the outcome can effectively be used to assess the performance of a given community, district/s, region/s and village/s etc.
According to the concept of human development, improvement in human conditions can be reached by expanding the range of people's choices and enhancing human capabilities. From this standpoint, it is a composite notion, reflecting how health, asset and education relate to the range of community performances at a particular point in time. If there are glaring gaps between communities that are not healthy with respect to their life standards, it is likely to impede the country's overall progress and sustainable development (Kundu et al., 2002).
The purpose of this study was to compare the status of health, assets and education of paddy farmers and those who were not involved mainly with paddy farming (i.e. non-farmers) in the Kurunegala district through indexing. The methods used to develop the index and collect and analyze data are explored next.

Development of the Index
Three indices, namely: (1) Heath Index (HI); (2) Asset Index (AI), and (3) Education Index (EI) were developed for each community using Principal Component (PC) analysis for the indicators given in Table 1. Selection criteria of PCs were based on the Eigen values, and in turn, different number of PCs was selected to develop three indices. Different indicators used to develop "Heath", "Asset" and "Education" indices are reported in Table 1.
Cost per calorie= NA CCPI OPL 1 * * House hold calorie intake was calculated considering the sex and age. Each set of indicators expressed above can be normalized by subtracting the minimum value of the particular component from its actual value and dividing it by the range, which is the difference between the maximum and minimum value of the selected components by following equation: (2)

Data Collection
The primary data were collected from 150 paddy farmers and non-farmers in Kurunegala district who were selected using Multi-Stage Sampling techniques. There were eight out of 30 Divisional Secretariat (DS) divisions in the Kurunegala district, which have the highest number of paddy holdings and they were selected for data collection. Next, eight Grama Niladari (GN) divisions were selected randomly from each DS division followed by random selection of 1 or 2 villages from each GN division. Finally, 6 to 16 households, depending on the population, were selected from each village ( Table 2). For the purpose of comparisons, same number of paddy farmers and nonfarmers were selected representing similar income group (Rs. 10,000 -20,000 per month). After developing the aggregate indices for individuals, average indices for two communities were formulated by getting the average of individual aggregate indices. A face-to-face in depth interview was carried out from April to May 2009 with each respondent with the help of a structured questionnaire, which was pretested by using the responses from 10 paddy farmers and non-farmers. Those farmers whose main income received from paddy were named as "paddy farmers", whilst the main income received from nonagricultural activities (government workers, private workers and business man) were named as "non-farmers"

Summary Statistics of Health Indicators
The average per head health expenditure for both communities was around Rs.290.00 per month. Further, it was revealed that 46.67% of the farmers were spending low proportion of money for their food than due proportion of food expenditure per month.

Health Index
The values obtained for the Health Index in comparison with paddy farmers and nonfarmers are illustrated in Figure 1. It was revealed that paddy farmers' health index was lower than that of non-farmers. In general, Non-farmer average Health Index (AVG-NFHI) score was 0.785, while the paddy farmers' average Health Index (AVG-FHI) score was 0.195. There was a substantial difference in the value of HI between paddy farmers and non-farmers community although their level of income fell into the same category (Rs. 10,000 -20,000).

Summary Statistics of Asset Indicators
The standards of living of a population which adds up to its welfare status are indicated by access to assets such as Television, Computers, Telephones, Mobile phones etc. The non-farmer community has a higher purchasing power for selected assets and corresponding penetration for the farmer community was much lower (Figure 2). Abbreviations used in the Figure 1 are given in the Table 1 under the household own assets.

Asset Index
The non-farmer average Asset Index (NFAI) scored a high value (0.603) compared to the paddy farmer average Asset Index (FAI) of 0.401. This indicates that most farmers have negative attitude towards acquiring the modern assets than those in the non-farmer community, in general ( Figure 2).

Statistics of Education Indicators
Education status is another important factor to measure the level of development of a community. Comparison of education indicators between paddy farmer and nonfarmer communities are given in Table 4. In non-farmer community 53.33% of respondents passed Advance Level, which was much higher compared to paddy farmer community of 16.67%. Average per head expenditure on education was Rs.2797.50 and 2168.33 respectively for the non-farmer community and paddy farmer community per month.

Education Index
When comparing the scoring pattern pertaining to the Education Index ( Figure  3), Non-farmer Education Index (NFEI) recorded a higher score (0.445) than the Paddy Farmer Education Index (FEI) of 0.401.

CONCLUSION
This study illustrates the development of aggregate indices using multivariate techniques to assess the level of human development by selected criteria. The outcome of this analysis provides important information related to disparities of different communities with regard to their Health, Asset and Education. It highlights that the values of three indices obtained for paddy farmers are generally lower than those of non-farmers in Kurunegala district.
The findings based on the indices can be used by the government and policy makers as baseline information to develop programs to uplift the farmers' living standards. , T.B. (2005). Methodological design process to improve income from paddy farmers in Sri Lanka. Thesis, Wageningen University.