The plight of late industrializers: what if peasants do not want to move to cities? — Branko Milanovic

A very interesting post.

The author fails to discuss the the situation with China, however, perhaps owing to limited scope.  The Chinese situation is interesting in that prior to Deng's reforms, China was a country dominated by poor peasants. The way that the contemporary Chinese government is dealing this is is building cities and requiring people to move to them. There is apparently not much resistance owing to the extreme poverty of the countryside. This was inevitable in the move to industrialized agriculture, where peasant labor was made grossly inefficient.

Something similar happened in the US fairly recently. The industrialization of agriculture all but eliminated the family farm as a viable income source owing to efficiencies of scale and technology.

Global Inequality
The plight of late industrializers: what if peasants do not want to move to cities?
Branko Milanovic | Visiting Presidential Professor at City University of New York Graduate Center and senior scholar at the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), and formerly lead economist in the World Bank's research department and senior associate at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace