Are Youth Moving Towards or Away from Agriculture? 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 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 land tenure system that allows youth’s full ownership of farming land.