Poverty reduction during the rural-urban transformation - The role of the missing middle

By L. Christiaensen, Yasuyuki Todo. 2013

205 citations recorded by the source corpus.

As countries develop, they restructure away from agriculture and urbanize. But structural transformation and urbanization patterns differ substantially, with some countries fostering migration out of agriculture into rural off farm activities and secondary towns, and others undergoing rapid agglomeration in mega cities. Using cross-country panel data for developing countries spanning 1980-2004, the analysis in this paper finds that migration out of agriculture into the missing middle (the rural nonfarm economy and secondary towns) yields more inclusive growth patterns and faster poverty reduction than agglomeration in mega cities. This suggests that patterns of urbanization deserve much more attention when striving for faster poverty reduction.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Sociology and Political Science, Urban Studies

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/44adf56c8d9bac192c05d35baac2e341ac5bd3d3

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Economics and Econometrics

1. Yang Zhou
2. Yan-sui Liu
3. Anjali Adukia
4. F. Modrego
5. Benjamín Jara
6. Yurui Li
7. Mark D. Partridge
8. Wenxiang Wu

In Sociology and Political Science

1. Yan-sui Liu
2. Yang Zhou
3. Anjali Adukia
4. Yurui Li
5. Mark D. Partridge
6. Wenxiang Wu
7. J. Berdegué
8. L. Christiaensen

In Urban Studies

1. Yan-sui Liu
2. Yang Zhou
3. Yurui Li
4. F. Modrego
5. Benjamín Jara
6. Mark D. Partridge
7. Wenxiang Wu
8. J. Berdegué

Citations in the corpus

• Cities, Territories, and Inclusive Growth: Unraveling Urban–Rural Linkages in Chile, Colombia, and Mexico (2015, background): “…indicate that countries that have more dispersed urbanization patterns with several urban centers of intermediate size tend to show greater poverty reduction than those with a greater concentration of the population and of economic activity in a few large cities (Christiaensen & Todo, 2013).”
• Effects of rural–urban development transformation on energy consumption and CO2 emissions: A regional analysis in China (2015, background): “The spatial-temporal patterns, regional characteristics, and dynamic mechanisms of RUDT and their impact on poverty reduction have been extensively and intensively studied in recent years [7–10].”
• Economic and Social Development along the Urban-Rural Continuum: New Opportunities to Inform Policy (2021, background): “…smaller and intermediate urban centers is linked to economic development of rural areas, poverty reduction, and reducing migration to larger cities that would mitigate congestion effects (Berdegué et al., 2015; Berdegué & Soloaga, 2018; Christiaensen & Todo, 2014; Diao, Magalhaes, & Silver, 2019).”
• Using agriculture for development: Supply- and demand-side approaches (2020, unknown): “Poverty reduction, where it has happened, has been more effective through productivity growth where the poor work (in agriculture and rural areas) than through structural transformation (Christiaensen and Todo, 2014; Rodrik et al., 2016).”
• Urbanization and poverty reduction - the role of rural diversification and secondary towns (2013, unknown): “In depth analysis by Christiaensen and Todo (2013) shows that the measurement error is neither systematic nor systematically correlated with changes in poverty.”