Rural exodus in the third world: A Malthusian crisis?

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The tides of emigration continue to drain the countryside of Africa Asia and Latin America. In Africa and Asia agriculture still takes the largest portion of new entrants to the labour force but its role is diminishing as it already has in Latin America. Urban populations have grown rapidly on all three continents throughout this century and especially since the 1940s nourished to a large extent by rural out-migrants. As actual and perceived differences between rural and urban opportunities have widened rural inhabitants have emigrated in greater numbers. What is making them leave? One needs to go behind the expected present discounted value of migration -- beyond even its immediate antecedents: the benefits and costs of migration -- to the deeper determinants of opportunities in town and country. Do those background factors congeal into Malthusian shape? Initially it would seem so. An Essay on Population and the Principles of Political Economy furnish a list of determinants of labour supply and demand together with a theory of income distribution and individual motivation which can take their places within the analytical framework that focuses on the decision to migrate and that is so widely used in migration research today. That framework is quite expansible and can reveal things -- like the effects of class exploitation -- that might surprise and even vex its framers. It is well suited to studying the migration of free agents who can decide whether to leave or stay put. They make up most migrants today. The framework rests on the reasonable assumption that from time to time people become aware of their goals and of failure to attain them; and that having done so they try to alter what they see as an unsatisfying situation. From the migration decision one can go back to a description of the social structure -- that web of opportunities temptations and impossibilities. Feedback loops make the account an endogenous whole showing how people reproduce or change their societies. (excerpt)