Population pressure, industrialization and social mobility

Abstract

Abstract This paper discusses the problems of industrial development in Asian countries which show high densities of rural population and contrasts their probable pattern of industrialization with that of economically more highly advanced European countries. When an approximately equal proportion of the population of western European countries was dependent upon primary production, as is the case now in agriculture in most Asian countries, agricultural densities were only roughly a fourth as great as in Asia to-day. Yet in western Europe despite emigration of “surplus” labour and relatively large capital supplies, industrialization proceeded only fast enough to skim off the net addition to population in primary production. In Asia population pressure is higher than in Europe in the past and capital scarcer. Hence it is not probable that industrialization will proceed to the same degree and in the same form as in Europe. In place of generally large-scale production, many small and cottage industries are likely to develop. These have lower productivity and hence lower wages than large industry, and the persistence of small-scale industry will impose the need to maintain separate labour markets for large and small industry. The maintenance of existing barriers or the introduction of new impediments to social mobility can be expected to provide a mechanism for an imperfectly “universalist” labour market in Asian countries and the continued existence of non-competing groups in the industrial labour force.