Markets And Rural Poverty

First Published in 2011. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book explores the place of poor people within a rich variety of value chains, focusing upon lagging, rural regions in Africa and Asia, and how they can 'upgrade' within such chains. Upgrading is a key concept for value chain analysis and refers to the acquisition of technological capabilities and market linkages that enable firms to improve their competitiveness and move into higher-value activities. The authors examine a range of evidence to assess whether the 'bottom billion' people, living mainly in the rural areas of low-income countries, can improve their position through productive strategies and, if so, how? They propose an innovative conceptual framework of value chain upgrading for some of the most marginal producers in the poorest local economies. They demonstrate how interventions can improve poverty and the environment for poor people supplying a wide range of services and agricultural and food products to local, regional and global markets. This analysis is based on empirical research conducted in Senegal, Mali, Tanzania, India, Nepal, Philippines and Vietnam. The main focus is on poverty, environment and gender outcomes of upgrading interventions, and represents one of the key challenges of contemporary development economics.

This book provides fresh insight into rural poverty in Latin America. It draws on six case studies of recent rural household surveys - for Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras, Paraguay, and Peru - and several thematic studies examining land, labour, rural financial markets, the environments, and disadvantaged groups. Recognizing the heterogeneity within the rural economy, the studies characterize three important groups - small farmers, landless farm workers, and rural non-farm workers - and provide quantitative and qualitative analyses of the determinants of household income.

All men and women are subject to risk: illness, accident, death. Some shocks affect their ability to feed and support themselves properly, either temporarily: unemployment, crop failure, and loss of property; or permanently: disability, and skill obsolescence.This report summarises what is known and also what is not known about the sources of risk faced by the rural poor and their coping strategies. It examines the impact of risk and risk-coping strategies on development and the way in which governments and international organisations can assist in dealing with risk and overcoming poverty.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century an idealized view of markets informs government policy. Real differences in how markets interact with social change are obscured and public action on poverty is constrained. Markets, Class and Social Change uses a detailed study of the grain trade in Bangladesh to show how socially-constrained patterns of market involvement may systematically benefit the rich while disadvantaging the poor. More generally, the book suggests that markets are implicated in the making of society, its divisions, identities and directions.

M. Riad El-Ghonemy argues that if current trends in government-led and market based land reforms persist the rural poor population in developing countries will continue to rise.Based on nearly half a century of academic and field research this valuable work presents compelling evidence on persistent rural poverty, hunger and increased inequality in

Overview and background; From the old the new development paradigm; The world of the rural poor; Rural poverty processes; Access for the rural poor to resources: land; Access of the rural poor to resources: infrastructure, technology and social services; Access of the rural poor the resources: labour and capital markets; Reorienting government policies and institution to help the poor; Rural women in development; Alleviating rural poverty through natural resource management and preservation; Strategies for targeting specific groups; Partnership and participation: necessary elements for poverty alleviation.