Poverty reduction during the rural–urban transformation
This article in the Journal of Policy Modeling, focuses on poverty reduction during the rural–urban transformation and argues that rural development is still more important than urbanisation. Based on cross-country panel datasets, the authors find that (i) an increase in population share in agriculture is associated with poverty reduction once the longer-term poverty change or the dynamic is taken into account; (ii) rural non-agricultural sector also is poverty reducing in some cases; and (iii) increased population in the mega cities has no role in poverty reduction. In fact, the growth of population in mega cities is “poverty-increasing” in a few cases. Given that a rapid population growth or rural–urban migration is likely to increase poverty, more emphasis should be placed on policies that enhance support for rural agricultural and non-agricultural sectors, according to the authors.