Rural employment and migration: in search of decent work
2007
S. Wiggins | P. Deshingkar
A further 106 million will have joined the rural labour force in the developing world between 2005 and 2015, but what work will they find, and where? This paper argues that new thinking on rural employment is needed to create more and better rural jobs. It argues that rural employment is inextricably bound up with the challenge of meeting the first Millennium Development Goal of reducing by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day and the proportion of people who suffer from hunger. The paper suggests that four things must be done to achieve this: increase growth both in agriculture and in the rural non-farm economy. Growth in agriculture will create some new jobs, and create higher productivity and better returns to self-employed farmers. Growth in the non-farm economy will be critical to creating new jobs and, therefore, putting upward pressure on rural wages<br /> invest in rural people: basic education, skills, health, and early nutrition. This not only improves people’s job prospects, but also reduces unacceptable disparities between rural and urban people<br /> encourage migration through provision of information, improved transport, making rights to public <br />services and protection portable, and facilitating remittances. If some of the rural work force can find jobs in the cities as migrants or commuters, this will help tighten rural labour markets<br /> push for better labour standards to end to child labour and to correct gender inequalities. As rural labour markets tighten, with rising productivity and wages, demanding this should become easier.
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