Are the Rural Poor Better off than the Urban Poor?
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Are the Rural Poor Better off than the Urban Poor?
| Author(s) | Locher, Uli |
|---|---|
| Abstract | In Michael Lipton’s original formulation, urban bias has several components. Third World governments implement policies concerning taxes, prices and investment which favour cities and urban elites, elites that obviously control the State. This bias increases urban-rural gaps in salaries, consumption and productivity. Such gaps then stimulate migration which is nothing but a transfer of human capital to the already favoured cities. The analysis leads to the conclusion that reasonable economic development policies should favour investments in agriculture and other rural enterprise, for reasons of equity as well as for reasons of efficiency. The “poor people” in Lipton’s book title are obviously rural people who “stay poor” because of urban bias. Cities do (relatively) well because of rural misery. Rapid urban growth has historically always posed the same problems of inadequate infrastructure and services, especially for the poor living in slums and squatter settlements. In addition, there are usually problems of high unemployment and increasing informality in the economy. But does this necessarily mean that the urban poor will be just as poor as the rural poor, that migrants are fools to hope that their fate will be better in the city and that the rural-urban gap will narrow in general? Our data do not support this. While it is true that Trinidad and Costa Rica stand out as countries combining relatively slower urbanization and relatively greater rural-urban equality, the most rapidly urbanizing country (Dominican Republic) does not always rank highest in terms of rural-urban gaps. It would clearly be important to look beyond the demographic process into the economic and political determinants of rapid urban growth if we want to establish causal linkages between rapid urbanization and a rise in inequality. Injustice: Marxist theories have never idealized rural life to the point the functionalist theory of marginality has done. Rural-urban gaps in poverty or cultural and economic integration have, therefore, never become central to the analysis. Yet the notion that cities magnify injustice and exploitation is indeed central to modern-day Marxist urban analysis. Rather than contradicting this notion, our data add some perspective to it. Whatever injustice may be prevalent in cities, it does not make the urban poor worse off than the rural poor. Whatever exploitative mechanisms may be incorporated in urban patterns of housing and employment and in urban service systems, their result is no worse than what affects rural populations. To single out cities for their production of injustice may even divert attention from vastly more exploitative and hopeless rural conditions. |
| IssueNo | 1 |
| Pages | 107-135 |
| Article | Access to Article |
| Source | Labour Capital and Society |
| VolumeNo | 33 |
| PubDate | 2000 |
| ISBN_ISSN | 0706-1706 |
Urban Sociology
- Capitalism and Cities
- Children in Cities
- Crime and Violence
- Demographics
- Economic Development
- Environmental Issues
- Globalization and Modernization
- Health and Cities
- Housing and Homelessness
- Migration and Assimilation
- Politics, Government, and Governance
- Poverty, Inequality, and Discrimination
- Research Issues
- Social Organization
- Sustainable Cities
- Town and Country
- Urbanization
- Well-Being and Cities
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