On the Urbanization of Poverty
Organisation: The World Bank
Publish Date: April 2001
Country: Spain
Sector: Research
Method: Environmental scanning
Theme: Poverty
Type: Article
Tags: Urban Poor, Urbanization
Ravallion identifies conditions under which the urban sector's share of the poor population in a developing country will be a strictly increasing and strictly convex function of its share of the total population. Cross-sectional data for 39 countries and time-series data for India are consistent with the expected theoretical relationship.
The empirical results imply that the poor urbanize faster than the population as a whole. But the experience across developing countries suggests that a majority of the poor will still live in rural areas long after most people in the developing world live in urban areas.
Located in: Resources