Robert Eastwood and Michael Lipton
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- August 2004
- ISBN:
- 9780199271412
- eISBN:
- 9780191601255
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0199271410.003.0005
- Subject:
- Economics and Finance, Development, Growth, and Environmental
Explores recent trends in developing and transitional economies in rural–urban, rural, and urban inequality of income and poverty risk, and the offsetting trends in inequality hypothesis (OTI), which ...
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Explores recent trends in developing and transitional economies in rural–urban, rural, and urban inequality of income and poverty risk, and the offsetting trends in inequality hypothesis (OTI), which claims that, underlying the overall inequality trend, there has been a tendency for rising intrasectoral inequality to be offset by falling rural–urban inequality. The data reviewed in the chapter refute OTI with the possible, partial exception of Latin America: first, the data show no overall tendency for within‐country rural–urban inequality to increase or decrease since the 1980s; second, while modest national and regional tendencies exist, they do not, on the whole, offset trends in overall inequality. Urban–rural ratios of both mean consumption and poverty risk have commonly either risen or fallen alongside total inequality, or even been trendless. Changing urban–rural ratios of poverty or per‐person consumption need not imply changing urban bias; they may be caused by exogenous changes in relative returns to urban activities, plus entry or exit barriers, although rural‐urban inequality trends in ‘human development’ indicators (literacy, longevity, etc.) do suggest rising urban bias. The chapter is arranged in three sections: Introduction and Summary; Rural–Urban and Intrasectoral Contributions to Changes in the Overall Inequality of Consumption or Income—an econometric analysis; and Changing Rural–Urban Poverty Ratios and ‘Urban Bias’.Less
Explores recent trends in developing and transitional economies in rural–urban, rural, and urban inequality of income and poverty risk, and the offsetting trends in inequality hypothesis (OTI), which claims that, underlying the overall inequality trend, there has been a tendency for rising intrasectoral inequality to be offset by falling rural–urban inequality. The data reviewed in the chapter refute OTI with the possible, partial exception of Latin America: first, the data show no overall tendency for within‐country rural–urban inequality to increase or decrease since the 1980s; second, while modest national and regional tendencies exist, they do not, on the whole, offset trends in overall inequality. Urban–rural ratios of both mean consumption and poverty risk have commonly either risen or fallen alongside total inequality, or even been trendless. Changing urban–rural ratios of poverty or per‐person consumption need not imply changing urban bias; they may be caused by exogenous changes in relative returns to urban activities, plus entry or exit barriers, although rural‐urban inequality trends in ‘human development’ indicators (literacy, longevity, etc.) do suggest rising urban bias. The chapter is arranged in three sections: Introduction and Summary; Rural–Urban and Intrasectoral Contributions to Changes in the Overall Inequality of Consumption or Income—an econometric analysis; and Changing Rural–Urban Poverty Ratios and ‘Urban Bias’.
Johnston McKay
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780748644735
- eISBN:
- 9780748676705
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748644735.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Religion
This book questions the widely accepted assumption that throughout most of the nineteenth century the Church in Scotland failed both in pronouncement and in practice to take seriously the social ...
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This book questions the widely accepted assumption that throughout most of the nineteenth century the Church in Scotland failed both in pronouncement and in practice to take seriously the social conditions of an increasingly urbanised society. It traces the social theology which developed in the century from 1830 until 1929 by examining the views of leading churchmen such as Robert Burns of Paisley, Robert Buchanan in Glasgow, and argues that until the theologian Robert Flint published his book Christ's Kingdom upon Earth in 1860, the church had no model other than palliative pastoral care through which to respond to the urban crisis. Flint enabled the Church to see itself as a partner with secular agencies and political action in creating conditions which brought closer the Kingdom of God on earth. The practical outcome of this paradigm shift in Scottish theology in the west of Scotland was active engagement with urban housing conditions and proposals for reform. The optimism of at the beginning of the nineteenth century however gave way to regarding the Church's numerical strength and membership as more important. The needs of the movement to unite fractured Presbyterianism, accomplished by the union of the Church of Scotland and the United Free Church in 1929, took priority over social theology and engagement.Less
This book questions the widely accepted assumption that throughout most of the nineteenth century the Church in Scotland failed both in pronouncement and in practice to take seriously the social conditions of an increasingly urbanised society. It traces the social theology which developed in the century from 1830 until 1929 by examining the views of leading churchmen such as Robert Burns of Paisley, Robert Buchanan in Glasgow, and argues that until the theologian Robert Flint published his book Christ's Kingdom upon Earth in 1860, the church had no model other than palliative pastoral care through which to respond to the urban crisis. Flint enabled the Church to see itself as a partner with secular agencies and political action in creating conditions which brought closer the Kingdom of God on earth. The practical outcome of this paradigm shift in Scottish theology in the west of Scotland was active engagement with urban housing conditions and proposals for reform. The optimism of at the beginning of the nineteenth century however gave way to regarding the Church's numerical strength and membership as more important. The needs of the movement to unite fractured Presbyterianism, accomplished by the union of the Church of Scotland and the United Free Church in 1929, took priority over social theology and engagement.
