Income comparisons between farm and non‐farm households play a crucial role in many aspects of farm policy. Using household income data from tax returns of all Norwegian taxpayers in the period 2006–2015 we study these income differences. We find that the unconditional mean income is higher for farm households, but with important differences depending on the comparison group considered. We also find that the income difference is reduced when we control for differences in the personal characteristics of the different non‐farm comparison sub‐groups. This finding implies that income comparison using unconditional means, as frequently done in agricultural policy making, is potentially misleading. We also show that the income effect of personal characteristics is not the same for different comparison sub‐groups, as has been assumed in previous studies of income disparities. Differences in personal characteristics, and the income effect of those characteristics, therefore need to be accounted for if income comparisons between farmers and non‐farmers are to inform farm support policies.

中文翻译：

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分解农民和非农民之间的家庭收入差异：来自挪威的经验证据

农场和非农家庭之间的收入比较在农业政策的许多方面发挥着至关重要的作用。我们使用 2006 年至 2015 年期间所有挪威纳税人纳税申报表中的家庭收入数据来研究这些收入差异。我们发现，农户的无条件平均收入较高，但根据所考虑的比较组的不同，存在重要差异。我们还发现，当我们控制不同非农业比较子群体的个人特征差异时，收入差异就会缩小。这一发现意味着，像农业政策制定中经常采用的那样，使用无条件手段进行收入比较可能会产生误导。我们还表明，正如之前收入差距研究中所假设的那样，个人特征的收入效应对于不同的比较子组来说并不相同。因此，如果农民和非农民之间的收入比较要为农业支持政策提供信息，就需要考虑个人特征的差异以及这些特征对收入的影响。