| Abstract: | Poverty in Madagascar has increased between 1962 and 1980 both in the rural and urban areas based on a comparison of some poverty measures, but decreased based on others. However, it remains predominantly a rural phenomenon. Distributional inequality is the major determinant of the variation in rural poverty, while the changes in urban poverty are due to the lack of economic growth. Thus, the urban bias introduced in government policies in the mid-1970s was not justifiable on strictly poverty-reduction grounds. A reduction of sectoral disparities would have led to a significant reduction of aggregate poverty. |
