Who are the agricultural households ? Insight into concepts and definitions

The household is the reference unit of poverty, inequality and well-being measurement. However, theory does not help to clearly identify this institutional unit. Its concepts change according to several dimensions: space, time, religion and cultural vision, among others. It is possible to find additional concerns when the target group is a particular socio-economic sub-group, as in the case of the agricultural household. This paper is an insight of the methods and approaches proposed in international manuals so to identify the options, issues and implications of statistically defining the agricultural household. Indeed, a specific definition can over or under estimate the size of agricultural household and to have an impact on nonsampling error. The aim of this approach is to provide researchers and policy-makers with a comprehensive review to better design rural policies, surveys and experiments.