<!-- Start of picture text --> Figure 15. Figure 16.<br><!-- End of picture text --> <!-- Start of picture text --> Share specializing non agricultural wage Share specializing non agricultural self employment<br>6 7 8 9 6 7 8 9<br>GDP (log) GDP (log)<br>Africa Non-Africa Africa Non-Africa<br>Overall Trend African trend Overall Trend African trend<br> Africa without NGA Africa without NGA<br>25 25<br>20 20<br>15 15<br>(%) (%)<br>10 10<br>5 5<br>0 0<br><!-- End of picture text --> Among rural households in the countries of our African sample, specialization in on farm activities continues to be the norm (practice by 52 percent of households on average), with anything between one-third (Kenya) and 83 percent (Ethiopia) of households generating in excess of 75 percent of their income from farming alone (Table 4). Among all countries, with the exception of Niger, a majority of households specialize in on farm activities. This result is quite different from the non-African households in our sample of countries, where only 21 percent of households on average specialize in farming. Within this group in only two countries the majority of households specialize in on farm activities, and diversification is rather the norm (45 percent of households fall in the diversified categories, on average). The relative differences between the African and non-African countries with increasing levels of per capita GDP can be seen in Figures 13 and 14. Rural households in the African country are clustered above the trend line in the former graph, and below the trend line in the latter.

When rural households in non-African countries do specialize, in a majority of cases this specialization is in on farm activities, although the percentages become lower the higher the per capita GDP. At higher GDP levels specialization in non-agricultural wage becomes more important (Figure 15), for both African and non-African countries. No distinct association between GDP levels and specialization in agricultural wage or self-employment is apparent for non-African countries, while for African countries the share appears to increase (Figure 16). Taken together, the main transition these observations suggest is one from a high reliance on farming gradually giving the way to a greater reliance on non-farm wage employment, with non-farm self-employment the activity of choice for a more or less constant share of households as development occurs. This essentially confirms the trends observed based on the crude income shares data (Figures 5-11 above).

Interestingly, only one of the African countries in our sample has more than 5 percent of household specializing in transfer income (Kenya, with 9 percent). In non-African countries observing more than 5 percent of households receiving more than three quarters of their earnings form transfers is not at all uncommon. It is hard to make hard conclusions out of these observations as transfer income is a mixed bag of several sources (social protection programs, pensions, migrant remittances and more) with very different institutional and socio-economic determinants. It is however worth flagging how very few African households are relying mostly on these sources of income for their livelihoods. Despite the widespread migration and expanding social programs, productive occupations are what keep most households afloat.

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