The Effects of Industrialization on Farm Income Distribution and Farm Numbers in New England

Abstract

Affected by industrialization, aqriculture in New England adapts to economic changes. Farms have become either large commercial units or small part time farms. Distributions of farm income have changed from an inverted-J distribution to a u-shaped distribution in the past three decades. Farm income grows slower and shows a larger dispersion in urban counties than in rural counties. Analyses of census data support the hypotheses (1) that farm income is loqnormally distributed and (2) that industrialization has a complementary effect on agriculture while growth of urbanization essentially reduces farm numbers mostly in middle income classes.