Survey the role of rural household's human capital on dependance on rangeland in Hable Rud basin

Livestock keeping is one of the activities of rural households to maintain their needs. In Hable Rud basin like any other place in the country, livestock keeping has been common from the past. Until some time ago, a huge population immigrated into Hable Rud basin due to its high potential for agriculture and livestock keeping from other parts of the country but nowadays, many people emigrate from the area due to some reasons. Demographic data and socio-economic information revealed family size decrease, population ageing, fertility decline, high percentage of literacy, and in other words human capital of households living in the area has changed. Livestock keeping is an activity requiring continuous labor force, and a change in human capital would lead to a change in the form and condition of livestock keeping among rural households of the area. Thus, a study was conducted in the Damavand and Firoozkouh townships in the northern Hable Rud and Eivanaki and Aradan townships in the southern Hable Rud. The field survey method was applied for this study and researchers collected the data by questionnaires with the reliability of 78% according to the Cronbach's Alpha. In order to analyze the rural farmer's dependence on rangeland, nominal logistic regression was used by SPSS version 22. The study factors were family size, number of males, age of household head, household head's years of education, number of family members graduated from high school and university, family member's average years of education and human capital. According to the obtained results, among independent variables, just household head's age and education class affected the dependence of rural framers on rangeland and these factors could explain the dependence on rangeland varying between 8.6 to 11.5%.