Abstract
Even though fishing is the most important industry in terms of employment in the Maldives, villagers in outer atolls also engage in various other types of employment, both within and outside their villages. Outside employment in the villages surveyed is either in Male (capital island), or in tourist resorts, or in a fish cannery or on shipping vessels. Furthermore, members in a household are not all involved in one type of business. The purpose of this article is not to build an income generating model for a household in a fishing village but to determine the relative economic position of fishing families and to consider whether variables such as age of chief householder, knowledge level of the family members (measured by educational level), major type of employment of the household, and the ownership or otherwise of pole-and-line boats affects the income of households in the fishing villages.