Rural Development and Population: Institutions and Policy : A Supplement to Population and Development Review, Vol 15, 1989 (Population and Developm)
In this volume distinguished development specialists explore the diverse ways in which rural development and demographic change in any society are institutionally contingent. Agrarian outcomes are influenced both by economic institutions such as systems of property rights and labor relations and by patterns of family and community organization, forms of local administration, and the international institutional environment that transmits "lessons" of experience elsewhere. The empirical materials presented, drawn mostly from Asian and African settings, suggest a more complex and society-specific agenda that has usually been set both for population policy and rural development strategy.
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Over half the world's people live in the rural areas of the Third World, their well-being directly affected by the pace and pattern of rural development. Demographic change is a major influence on development and, in turn, rural economic and social conditions have important demographic effects. Population-rural development interrelations, however, are not uniform across societies: they are modulated by society-specific forms of social organization and by the rules and routines of economic and political behavior--in short, by institutional structures. The papers collected in this volume explore the various aspects of this institutional contingency, particularly in Asian and African settings, and draw out implications for development strategy. The papers are grouped by the institutional domain with which they are principally concerned: agrarian production systems; labor market institutions; government administrative organization and legal systems; village and community structures; and family systems. The volume thus gives due weight to the policy significance of familiar economic institutions such as agrarian property rights and labor relations but seeks to direct equal attention to other institutional domains, largely neglected in the study of rural development, that are likely to be just as important in governing agrarian economic and demographic outcomes. A concluding chapter looks at the influences on Third World rural development, both positive and negative, emanating from the developed countries.
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