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Abstract
People tend to compare themselves with other people from their surroundings. This leads to a situation,
in which even a rich person in absolute terms, can feel poor in relative terms, if people from surroundings are
richer. We call it relative deprivation. Farmers in developed economies claim to be poor, because they compare
themselves not with farmers in poor economies, but rather with other members of their own society who work
outside the agriculture and whose incomes are usually higher. Feeling relatively deprived, farmers in developed
economies demand stronger financial support and act intensively to convince policymakers to support them.
Hence, the main aim of this paper is to analyze the relation between the relative deprivation of an average farmer
in countries with different development level and the level of support for farmers. Results of this study prove
that the level of relative deprivation of famers is strongly and positively correlated with the level of support
for farmers. Hence the idea of relative deprivation might provide additional political explanation of different
level of support for farmers in countries with different development level.