Role of Rural-Urban Income Inequality in Fertility Reductions: Cases of Turkey, Taiwan, and Morocco

Abstract

Studies pertaining to the relationship between population growth and economic development use the aggregate per capita income or energy consumption to measure the general well-being of the population. The Lorenz curve, as a measure of inequality, indicates a larger dispersion from the line perfect equality for the less developed countries compared with the more developed ones. This means that, for the less developed countries, a large proportion of the population subsists on an income which is even lower than the quite inadequate national average. The distinction between average well-being and the well-being of the average man is more and more recognized by the countries of the Third World as being an important criterion for evaluating the success of development plans. The importance of distributive justice as opposed to uncontrolled economic development has been brought to a sharper focus by the development planners of the Third World countries. Previous studies have demonstrated the importance of incorporating the nature of distribution of income as an important intervening variable in the study of the overall relationship between population growth and economic development.' Following the lead of Kuznets, I developed a measure of income inequality which represents the difference between rural and urban per capita income.2 This measure was justified in terms of the distinctiveness of urban and rural sectors in the development process. The per capita incomes of rural and urban sectors were derived by dividing the gross national products originating in the agricultural and the industrial