The available evidence shows that poverty in developing countries has a gender dimension; women axe among the poorest and chronically deprived segment of the population (World Bank, 2001). At the early stages of development, access to non-farm employment can be a way out for the poor and landless people in general, and women in particular, as has been demonstrated by the micro finance programs like Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. A related but more important point is that the bargaining power of a woman is likely to be positively influenced by her participation in non-farm sector since much of women's work in agriculture remain unpaid. Access to nonfarm employment bears special significance as a way to ensure control over income by women, which in turn has desirable effects on the intra-household allocations.<sup>4</sup> Notwithstanding the benefits of non-farm participation by women, there is a strong gender bias against women in non-farm participation in many developing countries (for instance, in our Nepal data set, the participation rates in the non-farm sector are 45 percent for men and 22 percent for women).5 It is important, especially from a policy perspective, to understand how much of this gender bias is due to occupational immobility caused by gender-specific intergenerational linkages. If there are strong intergenerational linkages in women's non-farm participation as the evidence discussed later suggests to be the case in Nepal, this implies that the long run benefits from women's participation in non-farm sector are likely to be much higher due to the intergenerational multiplier effect. Thus the standard cost-benefit analysis that ignores this multiplier effect is likely to underestimate the value of programs that simultaneously target poor women and encourage their participation in non-farm activities. 6 Our focus in this paper is on the more 'intangible' determinants of intergenerational linkages 4 A large number of empirical studies in the context of developing countries finds that greater resource control by women within the household leads to higher expenditure on family welfare (e.g. on food), especially higher expenditure on children (education, health etc.) and woman herself (for a recent survey, see World Bank, 2001). 5For similar evidence from India and Malaysia, see Feder and Lanjouw (2001). It should be noted that while this pattern holds in many African countries as well, in Latin American countries, participation rates in the non-farm sector are significantly higher for women compared with men.

> 6A different argument that underscores the importance of understanding the intergenerational linkages in nonfarm participation relates to the role of non-farm entrepreneurship in the structural transformation of an economy. A dynamic non-farm sector can be the seedbed for experimentation and development of an entrepreneurial class that eventually graduates to industrial activities, as was the case in Japan's rise to a modern industrial state from late Tokugawa to Meiji period (See Smith, 1988). The existence of strong intergenerational linkages in non-farm participation means that the initial conditions assume paramount importance, and the emergence and development of an industrial entrepreneurial class might be severely constrained when an economy starts with a tiny non-farm sector and a large agricultural sector.

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