ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses an unusual team effort to provide an overall model and theoretical approach to help the United States. Agency for International Development mission in Costa Rica in the formulation of a broad development strategy to ameliorate rural poverty in that country. The Parsonian approach has its greatest popularity in universities and in national and international scientific institutions in Costa Rica, but it is also shared in part with sectors of the general populace. The statistical indicators of poverty, including such variables as the ability to satisfy basic needs, access to health and educational resources, and security of income, can be measured on the individual or family level, the bottom level of the model. Carving out farmland and pasture from the abundant forests of the Nicoya region, the migrants settled among the small and medium farmers and the few cattle haciendas in the area.
