About a fourth of the labor force of Chile is employed in agricultural pursuits, and, as is true in so many less-developed countries, the situation of the agricultural labor force is a continuing preoccupation of the political parties, government authorities, and the legislature. The 1967 Chilean agrarian reform is the latest and most dramatic evidence of this preoccupation. Yet despite this concern about the well-being of agricultural workers, there is a real lack of basic information regarding the well-being of these workers and of the factors that explain their present plight. According to the national income account estimates for Chile,' real income per worker in nonagriculture is approximately three times that for the agricultural worker. This figure however probably exaggerates the difference because it does not allow for the lower cost of living of the agricultural worker, and it is likely that it also underestimates his income since much of that income is received in kind. Migration data provide more convincing evidence that real wages indeed are lower in agriculture. Between 1952 and 1960, for example, the total rural population of Chile increased at an annual rate of 0.7 percent while the corresponding rate for the urban population was 3.9 percent, and the agricultural labor force increased at a rate of only 0.4 percent.2 The migration data, in contrast to the national income data, are evidence that real income (wages) per head is lower in agriculture than