Poverty, Inequality and Rural Development

Poverty alleviation is a major objective of development. More than a fifth of the world's population lives in absolute poverty, and the majority of the poor live in rural areas. This volume studies what can be done for alleviating rural poverty. Four chapters address the measurement of poverty and inequality, including the use of household expenditure surveys and intra-household income distribution. Evidence is presented for India, Mauritania, Cte d'Ivoire and China. Other chapters present case studies on strategies for rural development: provision of rural credit in Bangladesh and India; technical change in Philippine agriculture; contract farming in Thailand; and banana growers in the Windwards. The contributions introduce the problems of rural development and show that effective rural development is assisted by investment in education and secure access to credit; that equity is important for incentives but not directly related to poverty; and that technical and institutional reform are essential, but require careful design and implementation.

General Editor's Preface; D.Greenaway - Preface - Notes on the Contributors - Introduction; T.Lloyd & O.Morrissey - Living Standards in a North Indian Village: An Analysis within the Stochastic Dominance Framework; P.Lanjouw - The Causes of Poverty in Mauritania. A Study Based on the Mauritania Living Standards Survey; H.Coulombe & A.McKay - Household Resource Allocation in the C te d'Ivoire: Inferences from Expenditure Data; L.Haddad & J.Hoddinott - Is China Egalitarian?; J.Knight - Government Failures and NGO Successes: Credit, Banking and the Poor in Rural Bangladesh 1970-1990; J.A.McGregor - Distress Sales and Rural Credit: Evidence from an Indian Village Case Study; W.Olsen - Farm Mechanisation and Rural Development in the Philippines; J.Lingard - Agribusiness, Peasant Agriculture and the State: The Case of Contract Farming in Thailand; D.Burch - Small-Scale Banana Growers in the Windward Islands: External Implications of the Single European Market; R.Read - References - Index