Pub Date : 2023-06-18DOI: 10.1177/14649934231173819
Changteng Nie, Jianxia Wan
Internet infrastructure, like other infrastructures, is gradually becoming an important force affecting economic and social development, laying the foundation for the development of the digital economy. Based on a quasi-natural experiment, combined with the data of 201 Chinese prefectures from 2010 to 2018, this study constructs a difference-in-differences approach to examine the impact of internet infrastructure construction (IIC) on the urban–rural income gap. The main results show that IIC has a significant widening effect on the urban–rural income gap. Our study also finds that the effect has significant location and city attribute heterogeneity. Specifically, the IIC widens the urban–rural income gap more strongly in central-western, inland, provincial capital and small-scale cities. Furthermore, the promotion of IIC to the income of urban residents far exceeds that of rural residents, which is a typical manifestation of the third-level digital divide. However, increasing the education level of residents is beneficial to alleviating the widening effect of IIC on the urban–rural income gap. Overall, national policymakers should pay attention to the possible inequalities in promoting the development of national broadband internet. Policies for improving the digital application abilities of residents, especially vulnerable groups, are highly recommended to share the digital dividend.
{"title":"How Does Internet Infrastructure Construction Affect the Urban–Rural Income Gap? Evidence from a Quasi-Natural Experiment in China","authors":"Changteng Nie, Jianxia Wan","doi":"10.1177/14649934231173819","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14649934231173819","url":null,"abstract":"Internet infrastructure, like other infrastructures, is gradually becoming an important force affecting economic and social development, laying the foundation for the development of the digital economy. Based on a quasi-natural experiment, combined with the data of 201 Chinese prefectures from 2010 to 2018, this study constructs a difference-in-differences approach to examine the impact of internet infrastructure construction (IIC) on the urban–rural income gap. The main results show that IIC has a significant widening effect on the urban–rural income gap. Our study also finds that the effect has significant location and city attribute heterogeneity. Specifically, the IIC widens the urban–rural income gap more strongly in central-western, inland, provincial capital and small-scale cities. Furthermore, the promotion of IIC to the income of urban residents far exceeds that of rural residents, which is a typical manifestation of the third-level digital divide. However, increasing the education level of residents is beneficial to alleviating the widening effect of IIC on the urban–rural income gap. Overall, national policymakers should pay attention to the possible inequalities in promoting the development of national broadband internet. Policies for improving the digital application abilities of residents, especially vulnerable groups, are highly recommended to share the digital dividend.","PeriodicalId":47042,"journal":{"name":"Progress in Development Studies","volume":"23 1","pages":"317 - 337"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48469990","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-13DOI: 10.1177/14649934231171985
A. Fforde
The commentary addresses, with constructive suggestions, the tension between common beliefs that development knowledge is not predictive and the general requirement that it be used to support instrumental action (using devices such as the log frame or theories of change that embody ideas that X will lead to Y). I suggest that this tension is best resolved differently from much current practice, which tends to fudge the issue. I draw two central implications: first, that stakeholders to a possible development intervention decide formally, before proceeding, whether the context and knowledge of it suggest that it is wise to proceed instrumentally or not; second, that a positive aspect of the ‘fudge’ is that a significant share of development interventions, whilst organized according to instrumental principles (such as the log frame or theories of change), in fact lack suitable knowledge and so are, in reality, non-instrumental. In such contexts, development professionals, in fact, have well-developed but informal methods for acting ‘non-instrumentally’.
{"title":"Purposive Action Under Conditions of Unpredictability: Lessons from Development Practice and Some Suggestions","authors":"A. Fforde","doi":"10.1177/14649934231171985","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14649934231171985","url":null,"abstract":"The commentary addresses, with constructive suggestions, the tension between common beliefs that development knowledge is not predictive and the general requirement that it be used to support instrumental action (using devices such as the log frame or theories of change that embody ideas that X will lead to Y). I suggest that this tension is best resolved differently from much current practice, which tends to fudge the issue. I draw two central implications: first, that stakeholders to a possible development intervention decide formally, before proceeding, whether the context and knowledge of it suggest that it is wise to proceed instrumentally or not; second, that a positive aspect of the ‘fudge’ is that a significant share of development interventions, whilst organized according to instrumental principles (such as the log frame or theories of change), in fact lack suitable knowledge and so are, in reality, non-instrumental. In such contexts, development professionals, in fact, have well-developed but informal methods for acting ‘non-instrumentally’.","PeriodicalId":47042,"journal":{"name":"Progress in Development Studies","volume":"23 1","pages":"344 - 353"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45338317","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-01DOI: 10.1177/14649934231151486
M. Asadullah, Jeron Joseph, James Chin
This article critically examines regional differences in poverty reduction in Malaysia with a focus on political economy factors. More specifically, we focus on the East–West regional divide in income poverty, between four historically poorer the West Malaysia and two states of Eastern Malaysia–Sabah and Sarawak during 1970–2019. Between 1970 and 1990, Malaysia implemented the New Economic Policy (NEP), arguably the longest and most ambitious race-based affirmative action programme in the world. In this context, we also assess whether and how its affirmative action policies succeeded in closing regional gaps. During the NEP, Sarawak saw greater and earlier reductions in income poverty and inequality than the resource-rich states of Sabah and Terengganu, where poverty largely persisted. We argue that politics played a key role in explaining Sabah’s different trajectory vis-à-vis Sarawak, Perlis, Kedah, Kelantan and Terengganu. The ethnicity-targeted policies of the NEP meant the Malays and Muslims were given priority over all other groups. The faster decline in poverty in Sarawak coincided with Muslim control since 1970. On the other hand, when Sabah was under the non-Muslim rule, there was little progress on poverty alleviation. The situation reversed when Sabah fell under Muslim control. The key lesson is that politics do matter during the implementation phase of poverty alleviation programme in Malaysia.
{"title":"The Political Economy of Poverty Reduction in Malaysia","authors":"M. Asadullah, Jeron Joseph, James Chin","doi":"10.1177/14649934231151486","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14649934231151486","url":null,"abstract":"This article critically examines regional differences in poverty reduction in Malaysia with a focus on political economy factors. More specifically, we focus on the East–West regional divide in income poverty, between four historically poorer the West Malaysia and two states of Eastern Malaysia–Sabah and Sarawak during 1970–2019. Between 1970 and 1990, Malaysia implemented the New Economic Policy (NEP), arguably the longest and most ambitious race-based affirmative action programme in the world. In this context, we also assess whether and how its affirmative action policies succeeded in closing regional gaps. During the NEP, Sarawak saw greater and earlier reductions in income poverty and inequality than the resource-rich states of Sabah and Terengganu, where poverty largely persisted. We argue that politics played a key role in explaining Sabah’s different trajectory vis-à-vis Sarawak, Perlis, Kedah, Kelantan and Terengganu. The ethnicity-targeted policies of the NEP meant the Malays and Muslims were given priority over all other groups. The faster decline in poverty in Sarawak coincided with Muslim control since 1970. On the other hand, when Sabah was under the non-Muslim rule, there was little progress on poverty alleviation. The situation reversed when Sabah fell under Muslim control. The key lesson is that politics do matter during the implementation phase of poverty alleviation programme in Malaysia.","PeriodicalId":47042,"journal":{"name":"Progress in Development Studies","volume":"23 1","pages":"127 - 151"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42983151","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Developed organizations have increasingly garnered numerous indicators to measure gender and development outcomes. Yet, measurements themselves reflect a logic of the arenas where development occurs and can be captured, and therefore reflect where women are imagined to predominantly exist. Based on the analysis of 1,298 indicators across 15 major development databases covering African countries, this article argues that mainstream development organizations predominantly understand gender in terms of institutional sites. Sometimes these were sites for intervention, or a place for institutional ‘betterment’ (a hospital, a work place, and a school). Other times, these sites were conceptualized as natural places where women would be (the family and the nation state). We identify the spatial logics underpinning these development indicators, and link them to larger historical gendered and racialized colonial logics organizing diverse social, economic, and cultural lives, where economic and institutional sites are promoted, a more nuanced and relational one is displaced. Ultimately, these spatial imaginings extend to the larger context of where debates about peace and security are situated—namely in largely individual, state-driven, and institutional-centric ways.
{"title":"Dominant Development Indexes’ Construction of Gender and Challenges for Recognizing Everyday Activism for Peace and Security","authors":"Mikaela Luttrell-Rowland, Sophia Rhee, Whitney Okujagu","doi":"10.1177/14649934231152089","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14649934231152089","url":null,"abstract":"Developed organizations have increasingly garnered numerous indicators to measure gender and development outcomes. Yet, measurements themselves reflect a logic of the arenas where development occurs and can be captured, and therefore reflect where women are imagined to predominantly exist. Based on the analysis of 1,298 indicators across 15 major development databases covering African countries, this article argues that mainstream development organizations predominantly understand gender in terms of institutional sites. Sometimes these were sites for intervention, or a place for institutional ‘betterment’ (a hospital, a work place, and a school). Other times, these sites were conceptualized as natural places where women would be (the family and the nation state). We identify the spatial logics underpinning these development indicators, and link them to larger historical gendered and racialized colonial logics organizing diverse social, economic, and cultural lives, where economic and institutional sites are promoted, a more nuanced and relational one is displaced. Ultimately, these spatial imaginings extend to the larger context of where debates about peace and security are situated—namely in largely individual, state-driven, and institutional-centric ways.","PeriodicalId":47042,"journal":{"name":"Progress in Development Studies","volume":"23 1","pages":"152 - 168"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48058295","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-01DOI: 10.1177/14649934221144887
J. Harwood
It has often been pointed out that development policy takes little notice of the history of development. Given the pressures under which policymakers have to operate, this is perhaps not altogether surprising. Occasionally, however, it is also suggested that Development Studies as a discipline also lacks a thorough-going appreciation of history. In view of the importance of historical perspective for any policy-relevant field, this claim deserves scrutiny. As a first step toward illuminating this issue, the article considers the ways in which development history is addressed in introductory textbooks used at British universities. It indicates that, with a few exceptions, texts’ discussion of history is generally weak in several respects. By contrast, the research literature in Development Studies is blessed with a large number of historically well-informed works. The defects of the textbooks, therefore, cannot be attributed to a dearth of appropriate source material. Instead, it would appear that textbook authors are failing to draw upon the research literature. In concluding, the article explores the possibility that Development Studies, like other policy-relevant disciplines in the social sciences, may be characterized by distinct knowledge traditions which operate largely in isolation from one another.
{"title":"Reflecting Upon the Past? Development Studies’ Ambivalent Relation to History","authors":"J. Harwood","doi":"10.1177/14649934221144887","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14649934221144887","url":null,"abstract":"It has often been pointed out that development policy takes little notice of the history of development. Given the pressures under which policymakers have to operate, this is perhaps not altogether surprising. Occasionally, however, it is also suggested that Development Studies as a discipline also lacks a thorough-going appreciation of history. In view of the importance of historical perspective for any policy-relevant field, this claim deserves scrutiny. As a first step toward illuminating this issue, the article considers the ways in which development history is addressed in introductory textbooks used at British universities. It indicates that, with a few exceptions, texts’ discussion of history is generally weak in several respects. By contrast, the research literature in Development Studies is blessed with a large number of historically well-informed works. The defects of the textbooks, therefore, cannot be attributed to a dearth of appropriate source material. Instead, it would appear that textbook authors are failing to draw upon the research literature. In concluding, the article explores the possibility that Development Studies, like other policy-relevant disciplines in the social sciences, may be characterized by distinct knowledge traditions which operate largely in isolation from one another.","PeriodicalId":47042,"journal":{"name":"Progress in Development Studies","volume":"23 1","pages":"203 - 210"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41491653","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-01DOI: 10.1177/14649934231162220
R. Ndesanjo, S. M. Asokan
Water, energy and food security are critical for realizing the Green Economy initiative. This article aims to assess the implications of climate change on the Water–Energy–Food Nexus in Tanzania within the Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania (SAGCOT) context. It analyses smallholder livelihoods in terms of access to and control over resources and investigates how their livelihoods are impacted by contested access to and control over land and water. We review relevant empirical knowledge and policy context in Tanzania and analyse the extent to which the policy environment promotes (or does not promote) smallholder adaptive capacity.
{"title":"Climate Change Adaptation and the Water–Energy–Food Nexus in Tanzania: Policy Trends and Smallholder Livelihoods","authors":"R. Ndesanjo, S. M. Asokan","doi":"10.1177/14649934231162220","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14649934231162220","url":null,"abstract":"Water, energy and food security are critical for realizing the Green Economy initiative. This article aims to assess the implications of climate change on the Water–Energy–Food Nexus in Tanzania within the Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania (SAGCOT) context. It analyses smallholder livelihoods in terms of access to and control over resources and investigates how their livelihoods are impacted by contested access to and control over land and water. We review relevant empirical knowledge and policy context in Tanzania and analyse the extent to which the policy environment promotes (or does not promote) smallholder adaptive capacity.","PeriodicalId":47042,"journal":{"name":"Progress in Development Studies","volume":"23 1","pages":"169 - 182"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43607034","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-01DOI: 10.1177/14649934221149610
Matthew Sabbi
A thematic gap in decentralization research is how rural councillors with limited political scope assert agency in rural transformation processes. Analysis of councillors’ strategic interfaces with local organisations and international agencies outside the elected councils explores how they construct access to resources for rural development. Drawing on fieldwork in rural Ghana, the article demonstrates how creative boundary-spanning links councillors to different structures of rural governance and development intervention outside the remit of the district council. Clearly emergent from this study is that the cross-boundary collaborations create privileged access to outside resources and support for local political action but with significant political and economic consequences for councillors. These collaborative engagements offer a wider framework to understand councillors’ individual agency for rural transformation beyond conventional analyses of state-led or bottom-up development planning and the dominant critique of external intervention.
{"title":"‘We Did Many Projects Together’: Boundary-Spanning Strategies of Councillors in Rural Ghana","authors":"Matthew Sabbi","doi":"10.1177/14649934221149610","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14649934221149610","url":null,"abstract":"A thematic gap in decentralization research is how rural councillors with limited political scope assert agency in rural transformation processes. Analysis of councillors’ strategic interfaces with local organisations and international agencies outside the elected councils explores how they construct access to resources for rural development. Drawing on fieldwork in rural Ghana, the article demonstrates how creative boundary-spanning links councillors to different structures of rural governance and development intervention outside the remit of the district council. Clearly emergent from this study is that the cross-boundary collaborations create privileged access to outside resources and support for local political action but with significant political and economic consequences for councillors. These collaborative engagements offer a wider framework to understand councillors’ individual agency for rural transformation beyond conventional analyses of state-led or bottom-up development planning and the dominant critique of external intervention.","PeriodicalId":47042,"journal":{"name":"Progress in Development Studies","volume":"23 1","pages":"183 - 202"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45810363","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-12-04DOI: 10.1177/14649934221131734
Lucas Ronconi, A. Kassouf
We discuss obstacles that researchers located in developing countries face to publish in economics journals. We group obstacles into two categories. ‘Supply-side’ obstacles include lack of funding, networking and certain elements of research capacity. ‘Demand-side’ obstacles arise from the practices of many journals’ editors. It is these less well-recognized obstacles that are the focus of this commentary. This set of practices combines to make it less likely that southern authors will get their work published. Significantly, the practices include a preference for manuscripts with highly reliable results (which usually require randomized controlled trials) over creative papers that confront questions that can only be imperfectly answered with the best methodologies available. This ranking discourages southern researchers from participating in journals and is a constraint for cumulative scientific progress.
{"title":"Demand-Side Obstacles to Publishing Economics Research: A View from the South","authors":"Lucas Ronconi, A. Kassouf","doi":"10.1177/14649934221131734","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14649934221131734","url":null,"abstract":"We discuss obstacles that researchers located in developing countries face to publish in economics journals. We group obstacles into two categories. ‘Supply-side’ obstacles include lack of funding, networking and certain elements of research capacity. ‘Demand-side’ obstacles arise from the practices of many journals’ editors. It is these less well-recognized obstacles that are the focus of this commentary. This set of practices combines to make it less likely that southern authors will get their work published. Significantly, the practices include a preference for manuscripts with highly reliable results (which usually require randomized controlled trials) over creative papers that confront questions that can only be imperfectly answered with the best methodologies available. This ranking discourages southern researchers from participating in journals and is a constraint for cumulative scientific progress.","PeriodicalId":47042,"journal":{"name":"Progress in Development Studies","volume":"23 1","pages":"99 - 105"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-12-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49433386","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-30DOI: 10.1177/14649934221129427
R. Serra, Michelle L Kendall, Alexandra M. Towns, James Hummer
This article points to the untapped potential for meaningful and mutually beneficial exchange between development research and practice, by presenting an example of an iterative process of knowledge formation, whereby project staff’s collective experiential insights and inductive learning are used to obtain an enriched Socio-ecological Model (SEM), which is attuned to the lived experiences in the field and is reinforced by the available research evidence. Using Catholic Relief Services, one of the largest humanitarian and development organizations worldwide, as case study, interviews were conducted with project staff from nine livelihood and food security projects and gathered staff’s perceptions and experiences with promoting gender-equitable outcomes through improved intra-household gender dynamics and men’s involvement. The qualitative analysis of the interviews shows that, while projects tried to integrate activities across the four levels of the SEM (individual, family, community and societal), staff perceived that the stickiness of social norms, women’s time poverty and limited buy-in from local organizations affected progress and presented new challenges that required constant adaptation. Our proposed method shows how an SEM can be enriched by incorporating these additional elements and by using existing research to confirm the significance of the exercise. An enriched SEM, by explicitly pointing to cross-cutting challenges that emerge from the field, is better reflective of the realities in which the staff works than a simple SEM. A process of SEM’s validation through incorporating insights from field staff and collaboratively involving researchers has the potential to deepen how projects or organizations think about the way they can foster gender transformative change; as well as to lead to more informed research and enhance researchers’ appreciations of the practical nature of development project challenges.
{"title":"Promoting Gender Equity in Livelihoods Projects: Practitioners’ Perspectives Through the Lens of a Socio-ecological Model","authors":"R. Serra, Michelle L Kendall, Alexandra M. Towns, James Hummer","doi":"10.1177/14649934221129427","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14649934221129427","url":null,"abstract":"This article points to the untapped potential for meaningful and mutually beneficial exchange between development research and practice, by presenting an example of an iterative process of knowledge formation, whereby project staff’s collective experiential insights and inductive learning are used to obtain an enriched Socio-ecological Model (SEM), which is attuned to the lived experiences in the field and is reinforced by the available research evidence. Using Catholic Relief Services, one of the largest humanitarian and development organizations worldwide, as case study, interviews were conducted with project staff from nine livelihood and food security projects and gathered staff’s perceptions and experiences with promoting gender-equitable outcomes through improved intra-household gender dynamics and men’s involvement. The qualitative analysis of the interviews shows that, while projects tried to integrate activities across the four levels of the SEM (individual, family, community and societal), staff perceived that the stickiness of social norms, women’s time poverty and limited buy-in from local organizations affected progress and presented new challenges that required constant adaptation. Our proposed method shows how an SEM can be enriched by incorporating these additional elements and by using existing research to confirm the significance of the exercise. An enriched SEM, by explicitly pointing to cross-cutting challenges that emerge from the field, is better reflective of the realities in which the staff works than a simple SEM. A process of SEM’s validation through incorporating insights from field staff and collaboratively involving researchers has the potential to deepen how projects or organizations think about the way they can foster gender transformative change; as well as to lead to more informed research and enhance researchers’ appreciations of the practical nature of development project challenges.","PeriodicalId":47042,"journal":{"name":"Progress in Development Studies","volume":"23 1","pages":"82 - 98"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48949058","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-20DOI: 10.1177/14649934221122320
Rekha Ravindran, Suresh Babu Manalaya
Structural transformation (ST) accelerates growth when labour transition occurs from low-productivity to high-productivity sectors. However, evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) indicates that the manufacturing sector is not generating enough employment opportunities and that labour absorption is primarily occurring in low-productivity service activities—a process known as premature deindustrialisation that hinders the growth-enhancing effect of ST. This article contributes by quantifying the effect of labour movement across sectors and estimating its impact on growth in the region. We apply the Shapley decomposition technique to extract the effect of ST on change in labour productivity. Next, by using a panel ARDL framework, we analyse the impact of ST on long-run economic growth for 12 middle-income economies from SSA for the period 1992–2017. Our findings suggest that in the long-run, ST towards low productivity service activities is having a growth-depressing effect on these economies. Although middle-income African economies have adopted several policy initiatives to reverse the deindustrialisation trend, our findings show that these have not (so far) generated economic growth. Further efforts are needed in these countries to foster the investment climate, infrastructure, financial sector, skills and regional integration needed for labour transition towards high productivity sectors.
{"title":"Does Premature Deindustrialisation Stall Growth? Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa","authors":"Rekha Ravindran, Suresh Babu Manalaya","doi":"10.1177/14649934221122320","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14649934221122320","url":null,"abstract":"Structural transformation (ST) accelerates growth when labour transition occurs from low-productivity to high-productivity sectors. However, evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) indicates that the manufacturing sector is not generating enough employment opportunities and that labour absorption is primarily occurring in low-productivity service activities—a process known as premature deindustrialisation that hinders the growth-enhancing effect of ST. This article contributes by quantifying the effect of labour movement across sectors and estimating its impact on growth in the region. We apply the Shapley decomposition technique to extract the effect of ST on change in labour productivity. Next, by using a panel ARDL framework, we analyse the impact of ST on long-run economic growth for 12 middle-income economies from SSA for the period 1992–2017. Our findings suggest that in the long-run, ST towards low productivity service activities is having a growth-depressing effect on these economies. Although middle-income African economies have adopted several policy initiatives to reverse the deindustrialisation trend, our findings show that these have not (so far) generated economic growth. Further efforts are needed in these countries to foster the investment climate, infrastructure, financial sector, skills and regional integration needed for labour transition towards high productivity sectors.","PeriodicalId":47042,"journal":{"name":"Progress in Development Studies","volume":"23 1","pages":"65 - 81"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42785330","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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