This is the fourth in the series of posts under the topic “Understanding the KGFS Customer”. The authors, Sowmya Vedula and Shilpa Sathe of IFMR Rural Finance, present data regarding occupations of KGFS customer. The information is as declared by the customer at the time of enrolment or at the time of any periodic updating of data.

Notes:

• This blog post displays data of all enrolled members of the three KGFSs, Pudhuaaru (Tamil Nadu), Dhanei (Orissa) and Sahastradhara (Uttarakhand), obtained from the datasets of the Customer Management System (CMS)
• Data considered for this post is as of November 15, 2011
• Pudhuaaru has 1,29,380 enrolled customers, Dhanei has 25,654 and Sahastradhara has 20,253 which brings the number to a total of 1,75,287
• This post also uses data of family members of enrolled customers from our customer management database. The total number of individuals considered for the analysis is thus 3,35,627 for Pudhuaaru, 88,452 for Dhanei and 85,316 for Sahastradhara
• Customers can enrol at any time throughout the year and hence the data collected is at different points in time
• Categories of occupations in the database are –Agriculture and allied activities, labour, migrant labour, student, business, working abroad, salaried, unemployed, housewife, and retired/pensioner. Agriculture and allied activities include people who own land and cultivate it, people engaged in fishing and dairy, and traders of crops and agricultural products. ‘Others’ includes income from self-employment in activities other than those listed above.

Overall Occupation Distribution

Chart 1 below shows the overall distribution of occupations by categories. Students are the largest in number (26.58%) followed by labourers (22.4%) and people pursuing agriculture and allied activities (13.6%). The number of unemployed people is also significant and amounts to 13.27%.

Chart 2 shows the distribution of occupations by KGFS entity. In Pudhuaaru and Dhanei, students and labourers form majority of the population. The unemployment rate is higher in these two geographies (14%-16%). The proportion of labourers migrating within India is the highest in Dhanei as compared to the other two geographies while the number of international migrants is higher in Pudhuaaru. In Sahastradhara, about one third of the population is students followed by agriculture and allied activities (25.4%) and salaried people (13%).

Most Common Combinations of Occupations

There are 15,648 individuals (5.77% of the total earning population) who are involved in more than one occupation overall. Chart 3 shows the most common combinations of occupations followed by these individuals. For example, there are 6771 labourers who also cultivate their own land, 2037 businessmen who are involved in dairy and 1175 labourers who are also involved in dairy activities.

Gender Wise Distribution of Occupations

Chart 4, 5 and 6 show the distribution of occupations by gender across the three KGFS entities. Noticeably, it’s a good sign to see almost equal number of male and female students across the three geographies. Wage labour is the most common activity taken-up by women in Pudhuaaru (25.89%) and Dhanei (19.37%) whereas in Sahastradhara majority of women are involved in agriculture and allied activities (43.70%). Migration among women is not a common trend and only 0.24% of women in all three geographies migrate for work within the country and abroad. The percentages of women who are unemployed are as follows: Pudhuaaru – 18.78%, Dhanei – 21.16% and Sahastradhara – 17.35%.

Among men, the distribution of occupations varies widely among categories in the three geographies. In Pudhuaaru, majority of men are either labourers (30.30%) or are involved in agriculture and allied activities (14.88%) whereas in Dhanei they are more or less equally distributed among agriculture & allied activities (13.94%), business (15.20%), labour work (15.40%) and domestic migration (13.80%). In Sahastradhara however, majority of the men are salaried (22.03%), followed by business (14.91%) and agriculture & allied activities (10.93%).

Distribution of Occupations by Age-Group

Charts 7, 8 and 9 represent the distribution of occupations by age-group. In all three geographies majority of individuals between the age of 1 and 20 are students. In the age group of 20 to 60, which is the productive age, majority of individuals are labourers (25.44%) in Pudhuaaru, while in Dhanei the majority is labourers (14.32%) and businessmen (9.48%). In Sahastradhara, most people are involved in agriculture (22.73%) and salaried employment (12.71%). Overall, domestic and international migration is observed mainly within the age group of 20 and 40 (73.33% of international migrants and 65.65% of domestic migrants). In the age group beyond 60, there is a significant difference in occupations among Pudhuaaru, Dhanei and Sahastradhara. In Pudhuaaru and Dhanei most individuals in this category (39.68% and 49.50% respectively) are unemployed while in Sahastradhara, this number is less than 19%.

Distribution of Occupations by Level of Education

Next, we look at the distribution of occupations by the highest level of education completed. Table 1 shows the overall distribution, while charts 10, 11 and 12 show the KGFS-wise distribution. Overall, 37.5% of the population has an education between 6th and 12th standard. Only 6% of the population has pursued graduate, post-graduate or vocational courses and the majority of these individuals are salaried employees, businessmen or are working abroad. Around 50% of the unemployed individuals cannot read and write.

In all three geographies, majority of the people who have pursued graduation, post-graduation and vocational courses have a salaried job. However, in Pudhuaaru alone, about 20% of people in these categories are unemployed. Among people who have studied till the 10th standard, majority of them are labourers In Pudhuaaru, and labourers or business people in Dhanei. In Sahastradhara, majority of them are involved in agriculture & allied activities. Pudhuaaru has a large chunk (44%) of unemployed people who cannot read and write, followed by Dhanei (36%) and Sahastradhara (30%).

Our next blog post will talk in detail about the distribution of incomes for all the above parameters.

By Shilpa Sathe and Amit Shah, IFMR Rural Finance

In this third post under the series “Understanding the KGFS Customer” we present data regarding expenditure patterns of rural households enrolled with KGFS. We also try to understand what the Planning Commission’s recently proposed poverty line cut-off (Rs.26 per person per day expenditure in rural areas) means for the average KGFS customer.

Notes:

• This blog post displays data of all enrolled households of the three KGFSs, Pudhuaaru (Tamil Nadu), Dhanei (Orissa) and Sahastradhara (Uttarakhand), obtained from the datasets of the Customer Management System (CMS).
• Data considered for this post is as of October 5th, 2011. The information is as declared by the customer at the time of enrolment or at the time of any periodic updating of data.
• Customers can enrol at any time during the year and hence the data collected is at different points in time.
• Data for expenses is captured household-wise (as against individual customer-wise). Pudhuaaru has 79,120 enrolled households, Dhanei has 18,216 and Sahastradhara has 17,513 which brings the number to a total of 114,849 households. There may be more than one customer per household; hence the total number of customers is much higher.
• With respect to household expenses, the CMS database contains data on expenses on food, clothing, health, travel, electricity, telephone and festivals. Expenses in the ‘others’ category includes rent, cable connection charges, and miscellaneous cash outflows as declared by the customer.
• It is important to note that recall periods vary for each category. The CMS database includes options for daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual frequencies for every expenditure category and the frequency is chosen based on one at which the customer recalls expenditure accurately.
• Throughout the post we have used the term Monthly Per capita Consumption Expenditure (MPCE) which is the household expenditure per month divided by number of members in the household.

The distribution of Monthly Per capita Consumption Expenditure (MPCE) for an average household for the three geographies is shown in the graph below. Pudhuaaru has the highest average MPCE at Rs.837, followed by Dhanei (Rs.625) and Sahastradhara (Rs.618). We can observe that the overall expenditure is highest on food lowest on telephone across all three geographies.

Expenses on education and festivals are almost double (Rs.79 and Rs.68) in Pudhuaaru compared to that of Dhanei (Rs.31 and Rs.36) and Sahastradhara (Rs.32 and Rs.35). In rural areas of Thanjavur where Pudhuaaru KGFS operates, expenses on travel are higher as compared to rural Ganjam (Dhanei) and rural Garhwal (Sahastradhara). Electricity and ‘others’ are the only two categories where MPCE is higher for Dhanei and Sahastradhara as compared to Pudhuaaru.

The break-up of the average MPCE on food and non-food items is given in graph below. It is interesting to note that in absolute terms, the MPCE on food items is highest in Pudhuaaru, followed by Sahastradhara and Dhanei. However, non-food items have a greater share in the average household’s overall MPCE for Pudhuaaru as compared to Dhanei and Sahastradhara.

The 3 graphs below show the percentage-wise distribution of MPCE figures for KGFS customers. Overall, 62% of the enrolled households have a per capita daily expenditure of less than or equal to Rs.26 (monthly Rs. 780) which is the proposed poverty line definition of the Planning Commission. In Pudhuaaru, approximately 58% of the households have an overall MPCE of less than or equal to Rs.780. This number increases to 75% for Dhanei and 78% for Sahastradhara.

For food items alone in the below graph, 91% of the households in Pudhuaaru have an MPCE of less than or equal to Rs.780. This number increases only slightly to 92% for Dhanei and 93% for Sahastradhara.

The graphs below show the distribution of MPCE by income quartiles and by geography. Overall, MPCE increases with increase in income and the difference is the greatest between the third and the fourth quartile.

However, as we can see in the below graphs, MPCE on food items increases at a slower rate than non-food items as income increases. In other words, richer customers are spending a lesser proportion of their overall expenditure on food as compared to non-food items.

This is the second in the series of posts under the topic “Understanding the KGFS Customer”. The author, Sowmya Vedula, of IFMR Rural Finance, presents data regarding KYC documents (both ID and address proof documents) furnished by potential customers when they enrol with KGFS. The author also presents data of existing financial services that customers were already availing at the time of visiting KGFS. The information is as declared by the customer at the time of enrolment or at the time of any periodic data updation.

This blog post displays data of all enrolled members of the three KGFSs, Pudhuaaru (Tamil Nadu), Dhanei (Orissa) and Sahastradhara (Uttarakhand), obtained from the datasets of the Customer Management System (CMS).

Note:
•    Data considered for this post is as of September 20th 2011
•    The enrolment statistics for the three KGFSs is: Pudhuaaru – 126,082; Dhanei – 24,793; Sahastradhara – 18,404; Total=169,279

ID Proof Documents

ID proof documents are collected from customers during enrolment with KGFS. Voter ID is the most commonly submitted ID proof document across the three geographies. The major document in the ‘Others’ category for Pudhuaaru and Dhanei are driving licence, bank passbook, PAN card and passport, while for Sahastradhara it is driving licence, PAN Card and passport.

The ‘Panchayat Certificate’ category comprises of letters obtained from a gazetted officer or the Panchayat Head or the Village Admin officer (VAO). Slightly more than 10% of all enrolments in Pudhuaaru and Dhanei used this category of ID proof. In Pudhuaaru, 72% of these enrolments were by females while in Dhanei, females in this category formed only 41%. A major portion of these enrolled customers were labourers or housewives.

PAN Card

PAN card (Permanent Account Number issued by the Income Tax Department) applications had been facilitated by the KGFS branches for its customers up to March 2010.

Address Proof Documents

The break-up of the document types collected as address proof are given above. The major document types in the ‘Others’ category for Pudhuaaru and Dhanei are driving licence, bank passbook and passport, while for Sahastradhara it is driving licence and passport.

Other financial services

The above charts give information about other financial services being availed by the KGFS Customer – bank account and other loans. The breakup of the source of the loans is given in the panel on the right.

(This is the first of a series of posts titled “Understanding the KGFS Customer”. The authors will attempt to understand the lives of enrolled customers of Kshetriya Gramin Financial Services (KGFS) by exploring the datasets in the Customer Management System (CMS) being used at KGFS. This data is collected during customer enrolment process and gets updated periodically. The introductory post carries work done by Abigail Andrews, pursuing her graduation in Economics at Stanford University, as part of her internship with IFMR Rural Finance.)

 This blog post displays basic demographic data of all enrolled members of the three KGFSs, Pudhuaaru (Tamil Nadu), Dhanei (Orissa) and Sahastradhara (Uttarakhand).  The analysis below is a first step in an effort to comprehensively understand the KGFS customer, and characterize their households across the three existing KGFS operations.

 Note:

• “Customers” in this blog post signifies the individuals in a household who physically completed the enrollment process with a Wealth Manager, in a KGFS branch.
• “Family Members” refers to the remaining members of the enrolled household.
• Taken together, each household enrolled with KGFS has at least one customer and, usually, a number of additional family members.
• All analysis is using data captured as of July 31^st, 2011, and unless otherwise noted all time-related variables are calculated as of August 1^st, 2011.
• Each variable was compared across the three KGFS operations, which operate in geographically and economically distinct regions.

The dependency ratio reflects the number of non-income earning family members (characterized as “dependents”) divided by the total number of family members in a household.

 

The gender distribution of KGFS customers varies across the 50/50 line between Pudhuaaru and Dhanei / Sahastradhara. Because there are significantly more male than female family members in all three operations, the gender ratios for family members younger than 15 years of age, was also analyzed.

 

 

The vast majority of KGFS customers are married, and amongst the small percentage of customers that are single, most are male.

 

The graph below illustrates the gender differential in education levels, highlighting Dhanei and Sahastradhara females as the least educated populations served by KGFS.

In order to capture the frequency of education levels above 12^th standard in the dataset, a variable for “higher education” was created. This variable indicates an education level of “Vocational Course,” “Graduate,” or “Post Graduate.”

The data within this blog post provides a basic demographic snapshot of the KGFS customer base as it stands today, according to the data captured during the enrollment process. Even within these simple demographic variables, the data shows substantial variation between the three KGFS operations. Through further analysis, these variations alone could lead to significant and exciting insights for the KGFS model.