Interviewer instructions
4.3.5 Item 4: Household type (code): The household type code based on the means of livelihood of a household will be decided on the basis of the source of the household's income during the 365 days preceding the date of survey.
[Chart showing classification of rural households into 'household types' is not presented here.]
For this purpose, only the household's income [p. 62] (net income and not gross income) from economic activities will be considered; but the incomes of servants and paying guests will not be taken into account. For the rural areas, the selected household will be assigned appropriate type code out of the following five different household type codes:
1 Self-employed in non-agriculture
2 Agricultural labour
3 Other labour
4 Self-employed in agriculture
9 Others
The procedure for assigning type codes is laid down in paragraphs 4.3.8 to 4.3.11.
4.3.6 Rural labour: This is defined as manual labour (by a person living in rural area) in agricultural and/or non-agricultural occupations in return for wages/salary either in cash or kind (excluding exchange labour). A person who is self-employed in manual work will not be treated as a wage-paid manual labourer. The term 'manual work' means a job essentially involving physical operations. However, a job though essentially involving physical labour but also requiring a certain level of general, professional, scientific or technical education will not be classified as manual work. On the other hand, jobs not involving much of physical labour and at the same time not requiring much educational (general, scientific, technical or otherwise) background will be treated as manual work. Thus the definition will exclude engineers, doctors, dentists, midwives, etc. from manual workers even though their jobs involve some element of physical labour but will include peons, chowkidars, watchmen etc. even if their work does not involve much of physical labour.
4.3.7 A person will be treated as wage-paid manual labourer in agriculture, or in other words, agricultural labourer if he/she follows one or more of the following agricultural occupations in the capacity of a labourer on hire or on exchange, whether paid wholly in cash or in kind or partly in cash and partly in kind:
a) farming including cultivation and tillage etc.;
b) dairy farming;
c) production, cultivation, growing and harvesting of any horticultural commodity;
d) raising of livestock, bees or poultry and
e) any practice performed on a farm as incidental to or in conjunction with farm operations (including any forestry or timbering operations and the preparation for market and delivery to storage or to market or to carriage for transportation to market of farm produce).
It may be noted that wage paid manual labours in 'fisheries' are excluded from the purview of the category 'agricultural labour' but included in 'other labour'. Further, carriage for transportation will refer only to the first stage of the transportation from farm to the first place of disposal.
4.3.8 Procedure for assigning household type codes in rural sector: For the rural sector, the single 'major source of income' criterion is modified slightly as follows. For a rural household, if a single source (among the five sources of income listed in paragraph 4.3.5) contributes 50% or more of the household's income from economic activities during the last 365 days, it will be assigned the type code (1, 2, 3, 4 or 9) corresponding to that source.
[Chart showing classification of urban households into 'household types' is not presented here.]
[p. 64]
4.3.9 For a household to be classified as 'agricultural labour' or 'self-employed in agriculture' (code 2 or 4) its income from that source must be 50% or more of its total income. If there is no such source yielding 50% or more of the household's total income, it will be given code 1, 3 or 9 according to the following procedure.
4.3.10 To be classified as self-employed in non-agriculture (code 1), the household's income from that source must be greater than its income from rural labour (all wage-paid manual labour) as well as that from all other economic activities put together (a three-way division is to be considered here).
4.3.11 A household not getting code 1, 2 or 4 will be classified as other labour (code 3) if its income from rural labour (all wage-paid manual labour) is greater than that from self-employment as well as that from other economic activities (again a three-way division). All other households will get type code 9.
4.3.12 For urban areas, the household type codes are as follows:
1 Self-employed
2 Regular-wage/salary earning
3 Casual labour
9 Others
The different urban type codes correspond to four sources of household income, unlike the rural sector where five sources are considered. An urban household will be assigned the type code 1, 2, 3 or 9 corresponding to the major source of its income from economic activities during the last 365 days. A household which does not have any income from economic activities will get type code 9 (others).