• Rural poverty and livelihoods

Rural poverty and livelihoods

Neither the state-driven development strategy of import-substitution industrialisation from the late 1940s to the 1970s nor the neoliberal market-driven strategy since the 1980s has been able to resolve endemic problems of rural poverty in Latin America. This Development Viewpoint argues that the major reason is that the main causes of rural poverty are structural - related to an unequal distribution of land and political power. Hence, effectively tackling such causes will require a new development strategy as well as a new balance of political power.

This author’s position is that the peasant economy in Latin America has continued to survive and will undoubtedly survive in some form for the foreseeable future. However, while the peasantry is far from disappearing, it is hardly thriving, and it is undergoing significant change. While a minority of peasants have been able to capitalise their smallholdings, the majority have been forced to increasingly engage in temporary wage labour under highly precarious and exploitative conditions. Some of the most disadvantaged peasants have been indigenous people. In addition, the lack of access to land has disproportionately affected women.

• Full text of document
• Publisher details
• Send to a friend