Are Poor, Remote Areas Left behind in Agricultural Development: The Case of Tanzania

Journal of African Economies, 2008, vol. 17, issue 2, pages 239-276

Abstract: The conventional wisdom in Africa is that economic reforms may have stimulated economic growth, but the benefits of this growth have been uneven, favoring urban households and farmers with good market access. This idea, although quite plausible, has rarely been tested empirically. In this paper, we develop a new approach to measuring trends in poverty and inequality and apply it to Tanzania in order to explore the relationship between rural poverty and market access. We find that, between 1991/92 and 2003, poverty fell the least in Dar es Salaam and the most in rural areas. Rural poverty is related to remoteness, but the relationship is surprisingly weak and it varies depending on the definition used. We find little evidence that remote rural areas are being "left behind", either in relative or in absolute terms. Copyright 2008 The author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Centre for the Study of African Economies. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org, Oxford University Press.

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jae/ejm018 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.oup.co.uk/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of African Economies is edited by Marcel Fafchamps

More articles in Journal of African Economies from Oxford University Press
Address: Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK
Series data maintained by Christopher F. Baum ().