HOW to Facilitate or Stifle Economic Development: The Role of Agriculture in Indonesia and the Philippines

William James and James Roumasset

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Strikingly different patterns of agricultural growth and widely divergent results in terlnsof rural income. poverty. and employment have cmcrged in Southeast Asia. In the Philippiies, with someregional variations, a patterns of declining red farm wages,increasing landlessness in worsening poverty and diminishing employmctlt relative to demand for jobs has emerged despite some brief periods of improvcment since 1960. Sincc 1980, the employment and poverty situation has deteriorated sharply,particularly in areas concentrating on single traditional export crops (lkc sugar or coconuts) but also in amore general context. Indonesia (particularly in Java, which contains over 60 pcrcent of the population) succeeded in reversing a seemingly inevitable worsening of poverty and inequality in the rural economy with strong evidence indicating that rural real wages and income of small farmers rose substantially between the mid-1970sand late 1980s. Why such divergent patterns of rural development exist and the lessons that can be extracted from thc varied cxperiences of 1ndoncsia and the Philippines are subjects of this papcr.

Keywords: agriculture; economic develoment; Indonesia; the Philippines (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D92 N01 N55 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1992
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published in SOUTHEAST ASIAN JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 2.1(1992): pp. 125-136

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