FARMING FAMILIES

Barclay, Foskey and Reeve (2007) noted that farming in Australia has traditionally been undertaken by families as a business passed onto successive generations. While there is a continuing dominance of farm families in the agricultural sector (Productivity Commission 2005) the number of farming families has been declining in all states and territories.

In this article, farming families are those families where the reference person, and/or their spouse or partner, reported that their main occupation was a farmer or farm manager (ABS 2003) in the week prior to completing the ABS 2006 Census of Population and Housing. A family is defined as two or more persons, one of whom is at least 15 years of age, who are related by blood, marriage (registered or de facto), adoption, step or fostering, and who are usually resident in the same house (ABS 2003). These definitions have been used to maintain consistency with Australian Social Trends 2003, Farming Families (cat. no. 4102.0).


FARMING FAMILIES BY STATE AND TERRITORY

The trend of decreasing numbers of farming families in Australia was reflected in all states and territories between 2001 and 2006. The smallest decrease was in the Northern Territory (1%) with the greatest decrease in Queensland (13%).

	2001	2006	change 2001-2006
	No.	No.	%
New South Wales	32 802	30 216	-7.9
Victoria	27 972	25 658	-8.3
Queensland	23 062	20 045	-13.1
South Australia	12 846	11 809	-8.1
Western Australia	12 059	10 994	-8.8
Tasmania	3 442	3 340	-3.0
Northern Territory	441	435	-1.4
Australian Capital Territory	128	119	-7.0
Australia (b)	112 753	102 616	-9.0
(a) Reference person and/or spouse reported their occupation as farmer/farm manager.
(b) Includes other territories.
Source: ABS 2001 and 2006 Censuses of Population and Housing.

FAMILY TYPES

Around half (51%) of all farming families were couple families with children. This compares with 45% of all families in Australia. The category contributing most of the difference between these two groups was the greater proportion of farming families where the youngest child was under 15 years of age.

		Farming families (a)		All families
	Family Type	No.	%	No.	%
Couple family with children		51 907	50.6	2 362 588	45.3
	Youngest child aged under 15 years	35 540	34.6	1 627 165	31.2
	Youngest child aged 15 years or over	16 367	15.9	735 423	14.1
Couple family without children (b)		46 698	45.5	1 943 648	37.2
	Male partner aged under 35 years	3 605	3.5	358 106	6.9
	Male partner aged 55 years or over	31 307	30.5	1 130 967	21.7
One-parent family		3 221	3.1	823 254	15.8
	Youngest child aged under 15 years	1 180	1.1	455 668	8.7
	Youngest child aged 15 years or over	2 041	2.0	367 586	7.0
Total (c)		102 616	100	5 219 165	100
(a) Reference person and/or spouse reported their occupation as farmer/farm manager.
(b) Includes couple families without children, not specified. For example, couples who have a child living away from home at boarding school.
(c) Includes other family types.
Source: ABS 2006 Census of Population and Housing.

In 2006, there was a greater proportion of farming families who were couple families without children (46%) compared to all families (37%). This includes a greater proportion of farming families without children with a male partner over 55 years.

There was a smaller proportion of one-parent farming families (3%) than one-parent families in Australia overall (16%).


INCOME

Farm family income

The most important economic resource for many households is a regular income, be it earned from a job or business, provided by the government as a pension or allowance, from superannuation or earned from other assets (ABS 2007). Land and Water Australia (2005) define the income of farm families as a reflection of the impact of commodity prices, farm structure, climatic and seasonal conditions, and non-farm income.

According to the ABS 2006 Census of Population and Housing the median income for farming families was $1,122 per week. Just over half (54%) of farming families had a gross family income between $500 and $1,399 per week and 30% of farming families had a gross income between $1,400 and $3,999 per week. Negative or nil income was reported by 3% of farming families. Family income is calculated by summing the individual incomes reported by all family members aged 15 years and over and includes any income earned both on and off-farm.

Comparison of household income to population

As there are differences in the family structure of farming families and all families in Australia, equivalised household income can be used to help compare the income of the two groups. Equivalising allows for the fact that larger households need more income to support the same standard of living as smaller households, and that there are some economies of scale in larger households due to the sharing of household costs.

Equivalised income is calculated by adjusting household income by an equivalising factor based on the number of adults and children in the household. For a household comprising more than one person it is an indicator of the household income that would need to be received by a lone person household to enjoy the same standard of living as that household.

In 2006, the median equivalised gross household income for farming households ($605 per week) was lower than the median for all households ($649 per week).

Overall, farming households had a similar distribution of income to the whole population. The equivalised gross household income of 49% of all households and 52% of farming households was between $400 and $999 per week. The proportion of all households with equivalised gross household income between $1000 and $1599 was 18% compared to 14% of farming households. However, negative or nil income was reported by 3% of farming households compared to 1% of all households.



(a) Reference person and/or spouse reported their occupation as farmer/farm manager.
(b) Families where one or more persons did not state their income were excluded prior to the calculation of percentages.
(c) Includes income from all sources.
(d) Census data on family and household income is calculated from individual income data which is collected in ranges. A median value is allocated to each range using other ABS data on income distribution, and those values are summed to produce family and household income.

Source: ABS 2006 Census of Population and Housing.


WORKING ARRANGEMENTS FOR FARMING FAMILIES

Cary, Webb & Barr (2002) identified that the decision to seek off-farm employment is generally driven by low farm incomes. Lim-Applegate, Rodriguez & Olfert (2002) found that operators and spouses with a tertiary education are more likely to participate in off-farm work and vocational schooling increases the participation rates of spouses. They also found that spouse participation in off-farm work seems to increase when there are lower levels of other income and decrease when there are preschool aged children living in the household.

Less than half of all farming family couples (40%) had both partners working as farmers. When the farmer was male, a third (37%) of their spouses/partners worked in an occupation other than farming and 18% reported not working. When the farmer was female, only 4.6% of their spouses/partners reported an occupation other than farming as their main form of employment and 0.6% were not working. Table 1.5 shows how average family income differs between farming families based on partner's occupations.

Couple families	No.	%	Median farm family income per week (c)
Both farmers	37 940	39.6	$1 118
Male farmer - spouse/partner other occupation	35 710	37.3	$1 220
Female farmer - spouse/partner other occupation	4 370	4.6	$1 393
Male farmer - spouse/partner not working	17 100	17.9	$835
Female farmer - spouse/partner not working	610	0.6	$793
Total (d)	95 720	100.0
(a) Excludes couples where the male or female was temporarily absent.
(b) Reference person and/or spouse reported their occupation as farmer/farm manager.
(c) Family income is calculated by summing the individual incomes reported by all family members aged 15 years and over and includes any income earned both on and off-farm.
(d) Due to rounding total number does not equal the sum of the components.
Source: ABS 2006 Census of Population and Housing.