Addressing poverty and inequality in the rural economy from a global perspective

Andrés Rodríguez-Pose and Daniel Hardy

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Recent decades have seen the rural areas of developing and emerging countries undergo significant structural changes. They are the source of several pertinent international concerns, including extreme poverty and hunger, and rising spatial and interpersonal disparities, challenges that national governments and the international community have made limited headway in alleviating to date. By analysing the range of rural development approaches implemented in recent decades, we develop a picture in which territorial approaches have become more mainstream. Since the turn of the century in particular they have gradually supplanted more traditional place-neutral approaches, which, we argue, have served to increase rural-urban disparities and exasperate the incidence of poverty in rural areas. Rural territorial development approaches, where able to mobilise sufficient participation and coordination between local stakeholders, civil society, and various multi-level actors, offer the most favourable means of gaining a better understanding of the many social, economic, institutional assets within a region. They can be harnessed to drive brands of regional development that are not only sustainable, but also more equitable and inclusive across different segments of the population and territories.

Keywords: poverty; inequality; rural development; territorial approach; place-based development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (23)

Published in Applied Geography, July, 2015, 61, pp. 11-23. ISSN: 0143-6228

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