Urbanization and poverty reduction - the role of rural diversification and secondary towns

By L. Christiaensen, J. Weerdt, Yasuyuki Todo. 2013

199 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A rather unique panel tracking more than 3,300 individuals from households in rural Kagera, Tanzania during 1991/4-2010 shows that about one in two individuals/households who exited poverty did so by transitioning from agriculture into the rural nonfarm economy or secondary towns. Only one in seven exited poverty by migrating to a large city, although those moving to a city experienced on average faster consumption growth. Further analysis of a much larger cross-country panel of 51 developing countries cannot reject that rural diversification and secondary town development lead to more inclusive growth patterns than metropolitization. Indications are that this follows because more of the poor find their way to the rural nonfarm economy and secondary towns, than to distant cities. The development discourse would benefit from shifting beyond the rural-urban dichotomy and focusing instead more on how best to urbanize and develop the rural nonfarm economy and secondary towns.

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

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b72575efe807626fdfdcb552ed3f53b3ddd498c6

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Citations in the corpus

Addressing poverty and inequality in the rural economy from a global perspective (2015, background): “Christiaensen et al. (2013) show how the lagging provinces of Mongolia and China have benefitted from targeted tax reductions and transfers directed to increase agricultural productivity and, as a result, have become important motors for not only greater productivity – helping to reduce urban-rural…”
The Rise of a Middle Class in East and Southern Africa: Implications for Food System Transformation (2014, background): “Though data are scarce to empirically estimate such a parameter, both the extensive literature on urban bias in policies, the theory and evidence for economies of agglomeration in urban areas (World Bank 2009), and investigations of the role of migration to urban areas in escape from poverty (Christ”