Rural Nonfarm Activities and Poverty in the Brazilian Northeast

This paper combines two complementary data sets to present a disaggregated spatial profile of poverty in the Brazilian Northeast, and to investigate the importance of nonagricultural activities for its rural dwellers. We present both univariate and multivariate profiles of nonagricultural employment and discuss its determinants. While the main occupational difference between the rural poor and the rural nonpoor in Brazil seems to be the greater reliance of the former on paid agricultural employment (vis-à-vis own cultivation), rather than access to nonagricultural activities, the evidence nevertheless suggests that diversification into this growing sector provides both an important complement to the budgets of the poor, and possibly a self-insurance mechanism against negative shocks. Despite the substantial heterogeneity of the sector, two general findings are robust: returns to education are comparatively high; and location in relation to urban areas is an important determinant of both employment and earnings in rural nonagricultural activities.     

新农村建设、农业转型与工业化城市化——一个新农村建设作用机制的经济学分析

本文探讨了新农村建设作用于我国经济发展的农业生产效率提升机制和农产品交易效率提升机制以及相应的具体途径。结果表明,在这两个经济机制发挥作用的条件下,经济结构和人口结构向现代化转型,但如果不彻底解决城乡二元结构、农民迁移和就业方面的歧视,城乡收入差距并不一定会随之缩小。改革开放以来的经验从另一面表明,在二元结构、工业和城市偏向政策下,农业生产效率提升机制作用难以充分发挥,而间接促使农业生产效率提升的财政和金融支持也难以有效地推动农业生产效率提升。这意味着,彻底破解城乡二元结构、破除阻碍农业生产效率提升的各种制度和障碍确应成为新农村建设中的重中之重。

Abstract：

How many policy combinations are involved in China’s New Rural Reconstruction？ Are they consistently interweaved to form a force leading to the increase of industriali-zation and urbanization,the increase of peasant’s income,and the decrease of urban-rural income disparity？This paper aims to analyze the two economic mechanisms,four policy channels and their effects on Chinese agricultural transition,industrialization and urbanization process,and urban-rural disparity. Our results show that these two mecha-nisms and four policy channels will exert a positive effect on the decreasing of agricultural employment and value share,the increasing of urbanization and industrialization,agricultural income,but they will demonstrate both positive and negative effect on the urban-rural income disparity if the removal of the old urban-rural dual structure,the promotion of peasant’s non-agricultural employment,and more integration of rural sector and industrial sector,weren’t placed more emphasis. This means these institutional reforms should be given more priority in the so-called New Rural Reconstruction Program.     

INFORMALIZATION OF INDUSTRIAL LABOR IN INDIA: EFFECTS OF LABOR MARKET RIGIDITIES AND IMPORT COMPETITION

Since the 1980s, industrial labor in India has been increasingly informalized, manifested in a rising share of unorganized sector employment and the growing use of temporary and contract workers, and subcontracting in organized manufacturing. Using unit‐level data from the National Sample Survey employment–unemployment survey for 2004–5, the paper investigates econometrically whether labor market rigidities and import competition have been responsible for the informalization of industrial labor in India. The results of econometric models show that labor market reforms tend to increase the creation of regular jobs, while import competition tends to raise casual employment among workers with education levels above primary.     

低碳城镇化对就业的促进作用及保障体系构建

增强人的生存和发展能力,促进人的全面发展是以人为核心的中国新型城镇化建设的终极目标,实现这个目标的前提就是要保障和实现充分就业。低碳城镇化是新型城镇化的重要内容和必由之路,低碳城镇化对就业的保障应该更具公平性并且按照就近原则来推进。文章认为,在低碳城镇化建设过程中,要促进就业增长和提升就业质量,必须优化产业布局、产业结构与发展模式,扩大就业空间;建立健全劳动力教育培训制度,培养适应低碳产业发展需求的劳动者,提高劳动者就业竞争力;推进城乡劳动力市场一体化建设,提高人力资源利用效率,增强社会就业公平性。     

Guaranteeing employment to the rural poor: Social functions and class interests in the employment guarantee scheme in Western India

Numerous observers rightly term the landless rural population the ‘most intractable development problem’ in poor societies. Given the extraordinary political and administrative obstacles to redistrubution of rural assets in India (the widely-recognized failture land reforms), attention and finances have recently been focused on public rural employment programmes to alleviate rural distribution. Within India, the State of Maharashtra, with a size and population of a large European nation, has instituted a striking departure from traditional rural works programmes: a guarantee of employment to rural adults on demand. The Employment Guarantee Scheme in one state has since become a significant policy model, and the experience in that state provides something like a laboratory for its analysis. Based on analysis of previous studies and original field work in rural Maharashtra, the article argues that the scheme is something of a rare bird: a programme which seems to be in the objective and subjective interests of the rural poor, as well as consistent with the interests of the rural landed elite, despite their early political objections. The fiscal structure of the scheme is a direct contradiction of Lipton's (1977) model of ‘urban bias’ in Third World development strategies; the Employment Guarantee Scheme is rather more a manifestation of ‘kulak power’. Though promulgated as an alternative to policies entailing redistribution of rural assets, and clearly superior to doing nothing about rural distribution, the scheme is inferior to genuine redistribution in terms of altering the rural political economy. The functions, if not the motivations, of the scheme are profoundly conservative in a structural sense, politically and economically; the philosophical underpinnings, and perhaps, potentially, the consequences for mobilization of the rural poor, are quite the opposite.     

Small Enterprise Growth and the Rural Investment Climate: Evidence from Tanzania*

Abstract: This paper analyzes characteristics of nonfarm enterprises, their employment growth patterns, and constraints in doing business in rural Tanzania. Using unique survey data, we describe a low‐return sector struggling to compete in a challenging business environment. However, about one‐third of rural enterprises are growing fast. Most enterprises engage in agricultural trade. Due to a rapidly growing agricultural sector in recent years, limiting demand‐side constraints, rural enterprise constraints in Tanzania mainly operate from the supply‐side, suggesting that in particular access to finance, road infrastructure and rural cell phone communication is associated with employment growth. A major finding is that subjective and objective measurements of business constraints are broadly comparable. We discuss a number of factors that would help to unleash the full potential of private sector‐led growth in rural areas. Marginal improvements of the rural investment climate matter for growth.     

非农就业提高农村居民幸福感了吗？

农村劳动力非农转移已经成为常态,对农村居民的福利水平产生了深远影响。文章基于体验效用假设,构建了工农要素流动下农村居民的幸福函数,并基于2018年中国家庭追踪调查(CFPS)农村调研数据,实证分析了非农就业影响农村居民幸福感的效应、机制与情境。结果表明:非农就业在总体上促进了农村居民幸福感提升,但却存在一定的"伊斯特林悖论"关系,即短期非农就业能够显著促进幸福增长,但长期非农就业对幸福增长的促进作用是有限的,甚至出现停滞或反向抑制状态;其内在机制主要在于非农就业过程中农村居民的需求层次逐渐由生存需要转向尊重和自我实现需要,但长期非农就业并不能显著提升外出务工农村居民的社会地位感知;非农就业对农村居民幸福感的促进效应,在本地非农就业和跨省流动的就业情境下更为显著,在女性群体、高中层次受教育程度群体中相对更高,且伴随农村居民的年龄增长呈现边际递减规律。基于此,文章提出创造本地就业市场、关注非农劳动力的就业需求变化、加强非农就业劳动力职业技能培训等针对性政策启示。     

An Input–Output Analysis of the Philippine BPO Industry

This paper provides a profile of the Philippine business process outsourcing (BPO) sector, makes comparisons with India and other BPO providers, and summarises the results of an input−output analysis of the Philippine BPO industry's inter-sectoral linkages and its potential impact on compensation and employment. The input−output analysis shows that the BPO industry is not a key sector in terms of stimulating production in other sectors of the Philippine economy. Growth in the sector's revenues, however, can have a significant impact on compensation and employment. If appropriate policies are enacted and human capital improved, it is estimated that the Philippine BPO sector may become an important employment-generating sector.     

The urban informal sector

On the basis of available information, this paper debunks some of the conventional wisdom concerning the informal sector. This sector is not the major point of entry for fresh migrants from rural areas and there exist large variations in earnings within it. A disproportionately large number of informal-sector workers are (i) very young or very old, (ii) females, (iii) limited in education and (iv) not the primary household earners. Finally, the paper confronts the predictions of a dualistic urban labour market model for trends over time in output, employment, productivity and earnings with the results of a case study of Peru by Richard Webb.     

Resource-Exhausted City Transition to continue industrial development

Resource-rich locations often rely on exporting the resources to prosper, but resource depletion is a matter of time. An industrial transformation is necessary to sustain economic growth when the comparative advantage fades away. This paper concerns the Resource-Exhausted City Transition program, a large-scale place-based policy of the Chinese state government. It applies firm data and examines impacts on industrial development in places suffering from resource-exhaustion. Estimation shows that the program has stimulated capital investment largely and fostered employment and efficiency as well, leading to a boost in output. The program does not favor the resource sector with little comparative advantage. It facilitates an industrial upgrade by extending the value chain towards the downstream and stimulating higher value-add activities. Effects are heterogeneous among firms with different capital intensity, age, size, ownership type, or regions.     

Peasant labour for urban industry: Temporary contract labour,urban-rural balance and class relations in a Chinese county

Urban-rural relations in China have a dual character: while a higher level of urban-rural economic balance than most other countries has been achieved, a sharp structural cleavage between workers and peasants has been maintained, based mainly on strict household registrations. Peasants are prevented from migrating to towns and gaining employment there, except under specially approved contracts arranged to resolve local shortages of industrial labour. Contract labour has complex and important effects on rural and urban industrial development. It also embodies the duality of urban-rural relations in China: at the same time as it redistributes wage funds from urban to rural areas, it reinforces the class cleavage between workers and peasants (including contract workers). It also opens up a complex web of inequalities and cleavages among those peasants with contract work and those without. Contract workers have been placed in a contradictory class position which has been a flashpoint of political conflict. The relationships of contract labour to urban industrial and rural development, urbanization, urban-rural balance and structural cleavage, class structure and political conflict are examined through a study of Shulu County, an ordinary rural area with agrowing industrial centre in which over half of the industrial labour force is comprised of peasant contract workers.     

China＇s Pattern of Growth： Moving to Sustainability and Reducing Inequality

I. Introduction China’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth has averaged 9.4 percent per annum since1978. As a result of this impressive growth, millions of people were lifted out of poverty. Economic reforms implemented over the last 25 years have certainly been instrumental in the remarkable growth performance, leading to higher productivity growth than in the pre- reform period. Nevertheless, it is widely agreed that China’s growth during this period has been resource intensive, drawing…     

Rural Nonfarm Employment and Incomes in Latin America: Overview and Policy Implications

Rural nonfarm employment (RNFE) and incomes (RNFI) are crucial to Latin American rural households. The 11 rural household income studies in this volume, reviewed in this paper, use 1990s data and show that RNFI averages 40% of rural incomes. RNFI and RNFE have grown quickly over the past three decades. The review of evidence provided some surprising departures from traditional images of nonfarm activities of Latin American rural households. In terms of shares of rural incomes: (1) nonfarm wage incomes exceed self-employment incomes; (2) RNFI far exceeds farm wage incomes; (3) local RNFI far exceeds migration incomes; (4) Service-sector RNFI far exceeds manufactures RNFI. These findings suggest the need for more development program attention to wage employment in the service sector, versus the traditional focus on small enterprise manufactures. Moreover, poor households and zones tend to have higher shares in their incomes but lower absolute levels of RNFI as compared to richer households and zones. The RNFE of the poor tend to be the low-paid nonfarm equivalent of semi-subsistence farming. Raising the capacity of the poor to participate in the better-paid types of RNFE is crucial — via employment skills training, education, infrastructure, credit. Finally, RNFE has grown fastest and been most poverty-alleviating where there are dynamic growth motors, in particular in the agricultural sector, but also in tourism, links to urban areas, mining and forestry. This means that developing RNF jobs cannot be done at the expense of programs promoting agricultural development.     

广东城市化、产业发展对用工供求的影响

广东城市化已进入高速增长的中后期阶段,产业发展进入工业化后期阶段,工业化进入重化工业发展阶段。用工的变迁符合城市化、产业发展的一般规律,用工荒成为长期趋势,第一产业用工比例下降,用工结构也在变化,第二产业用工出现结构性矛盾,第三产业用工增长较快,正在成为用工的主体,用工区域集中于珠江三角洲地区。为合理用工供求,文中提出了一些应对之策。     

Labour market dimensions of poverty in Indonesia

This paper focuses on labour market issues relevant to poverty alleviation. Patterns of participation, unemployment and employment are examined among the poor compared with the non-poor in general, among urban and rural households, and among various socio-demographic groups. Using data from the 2002 National Socio-Economic Survey, the paper finds that low participation in the workforce and high unemployment, while important, are less closely related to poverty status than expected, especially among spouses of household heads. However, sector of employment and underemployment are closely associated with poverty, especially for those in informal jobs in urban areas; in rural areas, the poor are heavily concentrated in agriculture. Among the poor, young people and females are more likely to be underemployed and to work in agriculture than prime-age workers. The data suggest that labour market policies that tend to protect those in formal sector employment are unlikely to reduce poverty much, if at all.     

Production activity within the London economy

As Britain's largest city with the most extensive range of service functions, London has led most other cities within the country in its loss of production activity. Within the overall net loss, there is however some new industrial development. This development is investigated to throw light on areas of possible industrial regeneration relevant to large urban areas throughout the UK. The paper first estimates recent change in production employment in London and then investigates a sample of industrial developments in the city identified through the Land Use Change Statistics. Though a significant 244 hectares was developed for industrial use, few new production jobs are likely to have been generated. The results point to growth dominated by the small firm sector, but with an even spatial spread over all parts of the city. The implication for policy is a reinforcement of its dependence on the small firm sector to offset major structural changes in economic activity.     

非农就业机会不平等对地区间农村收入差距的影响分析

文章通过建立农村收入模型，分析了东、中、西部地区间的农村收入差距。分析结果表明，农村地区间的工资性收入差距是构成农村收入差距的重要因素。区域间农村工业化发展水平和城市非农部门发展水平差异所造成的非农就业机会的不平等，以及农民在获得非农就业机会能力上的差异是导致地区间农村工资性收入差距的主要原因。     

IMPACT OF COMMUNIST PARTIES ON THE INDIVIDUAL DECISION TO JOIN A TRADE UNION: EVIDENCE FROM INDIA

This paper analyzes the impact on individual decisions to unionize of several factors: the reach of communist parties, the degree of political activism, personal attributes of workers, and industrial characteristics. The workers examined are Indian nonagricultural regular workers, using micro-data from the 2004–5 Employment and Unemployment Survey conducted by the National Sample Survey Organisation, linked to state-level factors. A notable result is that the reach of communist parties has considerable effect on unionization probability. Moreover, it seems that the mere existence of communist parties in a state also facilitates unionization to some extent. State-level political activism and unemployment rate also influence the individual decision to join a union. The paper concludes also that a worker's gender, marital status, ethnic background, employment status, experience, occupation, sector of employment, establishment size, and type of industry remain important in the determination of union membership.     

The historical roots of India’s service-led development: A sectoral analysis of Anglo-Indian productivity differences, 1870-2000

India fell further behind the UK in terms of GDP per capita and overall labour productivity between the 1870s and the 1970s, but has been catching-up since. This paper offers a sectoral analysis of these trends. Comparative India/UK labour productivity in agriculture has declined continuously, and agriculture still accounts for around two-thirds of employment in India. Agriculture thus played a key role in India’s falling behind and has subsequently slowed down the process of catching up. Although there have been substantial fluctuations in comparative India/UK labour productivity in industry, this sector has exhibited no long run trend. The only sector to exhibit an upward trend in comparative India/UK labour productivity is services. India’s recent emergence as a dynamic service-led economy thus appears to have long historical roots. Although India has been characterised by relatively low levels of physical and human capital formation overall, its education provision has historically been unusually skewed towards secondary and tertiary levels. This has provided a limited supply of high productivity workers who have been employed predominantly in services.     

我国产业结构与就业结构协调发展研究述评

文章从研究方法和主要研究领域的角度对当前我国产业结构与就业结构协调发展研究理论进行了梳理、总结和评析,指出现有研究在分析工具、滞后时间测度、国际比较方法、作用机理等方面存在不足。提出为促进产业结构与就业结构的协调发展,应该继续对产业结构与就业结构相互影响机理、如何衡量二者之间的整体协调性、就业结构滞后时间测算以及促进产业结构与就业结构协调发展政策等方面进行深入研究。