Rural-urban disparities in child nutrition in Bangladesh and Nepal

Background The persistence of rural-urban disparities in child nutrition outcomes in developing countries alongside rapid urbanisation and increasing incidence of child malnutrition in urban areas raises an important health policy question - whether fundamentally different nutrition policies and interventions are required in rural and urban areas. Addressing this question requires an enhanced understanding of the main drivers of rural-urban disparities in child nutrition outcomes especially for the vulnerable segments of the population. This study applies recently developed statistical methods to quantify the contribution of different socio-economic determinants to rural-urban differences in child nutrition outcomes in two South Asian countries – Bangladesh and Nepal. Methods Using DHS data sets for Bangladesh and Nepal, we apply quantile regression-based counterfactual decomposition methods to quantify the contribution of (1) the differences in levels of socio-economic determinants (covariate effects) and (2) the differences in the strength of association between socio-economic determinants and child nutrition outcomes (co-efficient effects) to the observed rural-urban disparities in child HAZ scores. The methodology employed in the study allows the covariate and coefficient effects to vary across entire distribution of child nutrition outcomes. This is particularly useful in providing specific insights into factors influencing rural-urban disparities at the lower tails of child HAZ score distributions. It also helps assess the importance of individual determinants and how they vary across the distribution of HAZ scores. Results There are no fundamental differences in the characteristics that determine child nutrition outcomes in urban and rural areas. Differences in the levels of a limited number of socio-economic characteristics – maternal education, spouse’s education and the wealth index (incorporating household asset ownership and access to drinking water and sanitation) contribute a major share of rural-urban disparities in the lowest quantiles of child nutrition outcomes. Differences in the strength of association between socio-economic characteristics and child nutrition outcomes account for less than a quarter of rural-urban disparities at the lower end of the HAZ score distribution. Conclusions Public health interventions aimed at overcoming rural-urban disparities in child nutrition outcomes need to focus principally on bridging gaps in socio-economic endowments of rural and urban households and improving the quality of rural infrastructure. Improving child nutrition outcomes in developing countries does not call for fundamentally different approaches to public health interventions in rural and urban areas.

[OA Permission Requested] Poverty and education in rural Chhattisgarh

Research for this chapter was funded by the Research Institute for the Study of Man and by the ESRC (grant number 1 SAN S281).

Increasing political returns and rural-urban migrations

This paper analyzes the different equilibria in rural-urban migrationsand political redistribution that result from the interaction betweenincreasing political returns, the distribution of land, and creditmarket imperfections. Governments that put a special weight on thewelfare of urban workers when setting agricultural prices generate apolitical externality in the urban sector, giving peasants anincentive to migrate in anticipation of policy determination. Ifcredit markets are imperfect, land ownership confers higherproductivity to peasants, who require large price changes to migrate.In this context, land inequality would lead to large migrations and tolarge policy change, while an egalitarian land distribution would leadto no migration and to a small policy change. This interaction shedslight on the contrasting experience of Latin America and East Asia atthe outset of World War II.

Poverty and marginalisation : challenges to poor women's leadership in urban India

This article examines the women's quota at the local governance level in urban India, using several case studies of women municipal councillors, to question the evidently low numbers of poor and marginalised women amongst them. It examines issues of class, caste, and religion that have a direct impact on the access of poor women to quotas reserved for them at the local government level. The objective of this work is to draw attention to the specific ways in which women are constrained at the pre-election stage, resulting in an elite capture of the women's quota in India, indicating the need for further research and study on this issue.

Competing and Conflicting Land Uses at the Rural-Urban Interface: Understanding the Impacts of Residential Development on Agricultural Landscapes

Rural communities are currently undergoing rapid restructuring as globalization impacts the future viability of many small towns. Agricultural regions throughout Canada, in particular, Niagara-on-the-Lake, are forced to adapt to changes within the industry. In addition to these challenges, sprawling residential developments from nearby urban centres are changing the dynamic of this town, resulting in conflicts between the residential and agricultural land uses. This thesis explores these conflicts from the perspective of the residents and the farmers. It was found that the initial sources of conflict related to noise-generating farm activities are no longer a concern, while the use of pesticide have become a source of contention among the residents. The farmers, alternately, were found to be proactive and strived to limit the potential for conflict with adjacent residents. Lastly, it was determined that planning legislation aggravates land use conflicts within Niagara-on-the-Lake and need to better address these land use conflicts.

Small towns as 'sub-poles' in English rural development: Investigating rural-urban linkages using sub-regional social accounting matrices

This paper uses spatial economic data from four small English towns to measure the strength of economic integration between town and hinterland and to estimate the magnitude of town-hinterland spill-over effects. Following estimation of local integration indicators and inter-locale flows, sub-regional social accounting matrices (SAMs) are developed to estimate the strength of local employment and output multipliers for various economic sectors. The potential value of a town as a 'sub-pole' in local economic development is shown to be dependent on structural differences in the local economy, such as the particular mix of firms within towns. Although the multipliers are generally small, indicating a low level of local linkages, some sectors, particularly financial services and banking, show consistently higher multipliers for both output and employment. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Literacy Practices in and out of School in Karagwe : The case of primary school literacy education in rural Tanzania

This study has investigated the question of relation between literacy practices in and out of school in rural Tanzania. By using the perspective of linguistic anthropology, literacy practices in five villages in Karagwe district in the northwest of Tanzania have been analysed. The outcome may be used as a basis for educational planning and literacy programs. The analysis has revealed an intimate relation between language, literacy and power. In Karagwe, traditional élites have drawn on literacy to construct and reconstruct their authority, while new élites, such as individual women and some young people have been able to use literacy as one tool to get access to power. The study has also revealed a high level of bilingualism and a high emphasis on education in the area, which prove a potential for future education in the area. At the same time discontinuity in language use, mainly caused by stigmatisation of what is perceived as local and traditional, such as the mother-tongue of the majority of the children, and the high status accrued to all that is perceived as Western, has turned out to constitute a great obstacle for pupils’ learning. The use of ethnographic perspectives has enabled comparisons between interactional patterns in schools and outside school. This has revealed communicative patterns in school that hinder pupils’ learning, while the same patterns in other discourses reinforce learning. By using ethnography, relations between explicit and implicit language ideologies and their impact in educational contexts may be revealed. This knowledge may then be used to make educational plans and literacy programmes more relevant and efficient, not only in poor post-colonial settings such as Tanzania, but also elsewhere, such as in Western settings.

Language ideologies and Schooled Education in Rural Tanzania : The Case of Karagwe

In this article I argue that language policies for education have effects on pupils’ educational possibilities. With the case of Karagwe district in Tanzania I have found that the case of “Swahili only” in primary school education favours the small minority of the children that live in a context where Swahili is used. This leads to inequality in pupils’ chances in education and to a low level of achievement of academic content in schools. This also promote the developing and use of safety strategies among teachers and pupils that hide failure and prevent pupils’ learning.

Rural-urban migration in D-dimensional lattices

The rural-urban migration phenomenon is analyzed by using an agent-based computational model. Agents are placed on lattices which dimensions varying from d = 2 up to d = 7. The localization of the agents in the lattice defines that their social neighborhood (rural or urban) is not related to their spatial distribution. The effect of the dimension of lattice is studied by analyzing the variation of the main parameters that characterizes the migratory process. The dynamics displays strong effects even for around one million of sites, in higher dimensions (d = 6, 7).

Agent-based model to rural-urban migration analysis

In this paper, we analyze the rural-urban migration phenomenon as it is usually observed in economies which are in the early stages of industrialization. The analysis is conducted by means of a statistical mechanics approach which builds a computational agent-based model. Agents are placed on a lattice and the connections among them are described via an Ising-like model. Simulations on this computational model show some emergent properties that are common in developing economies, such as a transitional dynamics characterized by continuous growth of urban population, followed by the equalization of expected wages between rural and urban sectors (Harris-Todaro equilibrium condition), urban concentration and increasing of per capita income. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

A Harris-Todaro agent-based model to rural-urban migration

The Harris-Todaro model of the rural-urban migration process is revisited under an agent-based approach. The migration of the workers is interpreted as a process of social learning by imitation, formalized by a computational model. By simulating this model, we observe a transitional dynamics with continuous growth of the urban fraction of overall population toward an equilibrium. Such an equilibrium is characterized by stabilization of rural-urban expected wages differential (generalized Harris-Todaro equilibrium condition), urban concentration and urban unemployment. These classic results obtained originally by Harris and Todaro are emergent properties of our model.

Neo-liberalism versus neo-structuralism in Latin America

Includes bibliography

Neo-structuralism versus neo-liberalism in the 1990s

Presenta un contrapunto crítico en torno a los aspectos más fundamentales que distinguen a las actuales propuestas estratégicas de desarrollo de largo plazo asociadas a los enfoques neoliberal y neoestructuralista.

Development and education in rural areas

Includes bibliography