Income Level, Expenditure Pattern and Poverty among Punjab Farmers Singh Sukhpal, Sharma V. K., Kingra H. S., Bhogal Shruti Department of Economics and Sociology, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana-141004 JEL Classification: 012, 024, H31, 130, R12 Online published on 16 September, 2014. Abstract Green revolution transformed the agrarion economy of Punjab much faster, making it the food basket of India, as compared to other states of the Indian union. However, increasing costs and declining form income of farming community in Punjab is not enough to cater to their form and domestic expenditure, and hence they have to turn towards non-form income for a living. The current study examined the income, expenditure pattem and its distribution among different form size categories in Punjab. A significant variation in the income and expenditure level of different form size categories was observed. The larger formers incurred more expenditure for domestic consumption compared to the smaller formers. The smaller formers were left with meagre amount of surplus compared to the larger formers. It is a pity that about 35 per cent of the marginal formers and 20 per cent of the small formers were below the poverty line in contrast to none of the semi-medium, medium and lorge formers during 2010–11. Ensuring effective distribution, allocation and implementation of various welfare schemes in order to brace the smaller formers is a matter of prime concern and if left unattended will drag the economy of Punjab towards ambiguous development. Top Keywords Income, expenditure, farmers, poverty, Punjab. Top |