New Evidence on the Urbanization of Global Poverty

By M. Ravallion, Shaohua Chen, P. Sangraula. 2007

806 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper probes into the empirical roots of the debate as to whether poverty is now indeed mainly an urban problem. It aims to throw new light on the extent to which poverty is in fact urbanizing in the developing world and what role urbanization of the population has played in overall poverty reduction. The study reports its results in studying a new data set created for this paper, covering about 90 developing countries with observations over time for about 80% of them. The authors conclude, however, that the recent pace of urbanization and current forecasts for urban population growth imply that a majority of the world's poor will still live in rural areas for many decades to come.

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

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ffabac958b918f148f0d69dc7e3dcf09e8b87c10

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Citations in the corpus

Agriculture for Development: Toward a New Paradigm (2009, background): “Even with rapid urbanization, the developing world is expected to remain predominantly rural in most regions until about 2020, and the majority of the poor are projected to continue to live in rural areas until 2040 (Ravallion, Chen, and Sangraula, 2007).”
Addressing poverty and inequality in the rural economy from a global perspective (2015, background): “The number of rural poor fell by an estimated 100 million between 1993 and 2001, but this was partially offset by an increase in the urban poor by around 50 million (Ravallion et al., 2007).”
Urban agriculture, poverty, and food security: empirical evidence from a sample of developing countries. (2010, background): “Ravallion et al. (2007) estimate that about one-quarter of the developing world’s poor live in urban areas, but also that poverty is becoming more urban and the poor are urbanizing faster than the population as a whole. ll rights reserved. x: +39 06 570 555 22. otmail.com (A. Zezza), luca.”
The effect of education on household food security in two informal urban settlements in Kenya: a longitudinal analysis (2016, background): “…the rural population remains relevant and of interest to researchers, the growing urban population, especially the urban poor is increasingly becoming of interest too for it poses risks to achieving social, economic and health development in low and middle income countries (Ravallion et al. 2007).”
Warming increases the risk of civil war in Africa (2009, background): “economic productivity, then, given the current and expected future importance of agriculture in African livelihoods (24), governments and aid donors could help reduce conflict risk in Africa by improving the ability of African agriculture to deal with extreme heat.”
Rural Poverty (2009, methodology): “well above the overall population share living in rural areas which is 58 percent ( Ravallion et al., 2007 ).1 Sub-Saharan Africa is no exception: while it has the highest”
More Relatively-Poor People in a Less Absolutely-Poor World (2012, neutral): “We then use existing differentials in urban-rural poverty lines at country level for these countries (from Ravallion et al., 2007) to correct the national PPP.”
Market inefficiencies and the adoption of agricultural technologies in developing countries 1 (2013, background): “Nearly 75 percent of those subsisting on $1 a day live in rural areas, and it is estimated that the majority of the poor will remain rural until 2040 (Ravallion et al. 2007).”
Sustainable energy in Africa: A comprehensive data and policies review (2014, background): “While it is not correct to claim rapid urbanization of Africa, and instead the urban growth rates in most Africa countries generally follow the national population trends [112], it is undoubtedly true that underdevelopment and poverty are predominantly rural phenomena [103,113]: indeed about 70% of ”
Adaptation to land constraints: Is Africa different? (2014, background): “First, there is substantial evidence that Africa’s rapid urbanization is overstated by UN statistics (Potts, 2012), and that urban poverty reduction in Africa has been slower than elsewhere (Headey et al., 2010; Ravallion et al., 2007).”