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Agricultural Employment in Region II ,Philippines
Thesis Abstract:
The study attempted to determine the growth rate of output and inputs for rice production in Central Luzon for the period 1960 to 1972.Factors of production considered were land, labor, irrigation ang machinery.
Statistical analysis started with formulation of the Cobb-Douglas production function, based on
Secondary data mostly taken from the Bueau of Agricultural Economics, NEDA, Central Bank, GAMI Machineries, Inc., and Bureau of Census and statistics. Based on regression coefficients, the marginal products of machinery and labor were computed to determine the marginal rate of technical substitution between machinery and labor.
Findings indicated that rice output increased at an annual compound rate of 1.01% for Central Luzon and 3.8& for the national level. For production, annual compound growth rate for the same period was 11.5% for both central Luzon ang national levels.
The annual compound growth rates for factors of production in Central Luzon and at the national level, respectively, were: land , 1.0 and 0.6%; machinery,3 and 7%; irrigation, 11.0 and 3.7%, and labor, 1 and 2%.
The Cobb-Douglas production function used to estimate the regression coefficients, marginal products and geometric means of the different inputs, produced a good fit with a justifiable value of R2 and significant t-values for inputs except for land and irrigation.
The regression coefficients of the inputs proved to be negative for labor, implying a declining rate of labor employment in Central Luzon. The less than unity, implying decreasing returns to scale.
The Computed marginal results showed positive marginal products of land, machinery and irrigation. Specifically , machinery had very high marginal product, but labor had negative one. This points to an oversaturation of labor employed in rice production, resulting in decreasing output. Thus, persisting labor-intensive nature of agriculture in Central Luzon showed that labor had not been much displaced by mechanization. However, the hypothesis on the negative effect of machinery on employment was not confirmed.