Introduction

These essays cover diverse topics on questions of employment, unemployment and income distribution in the Third World. The justification for collecting them into a single volume arises from the recent identification of the problem of employment in developing countries with that of income distribution. ILO experts meeting to define un- and underemployment included workers with ‘abnormally low earnings’ as among the underemployed [ ILO, 1966 ] similarly, Turnham [1970], in his review of the employment problem for the OECD, suggested including all those full-time workers whose incomes fell ‘below some reference level—say one-third or less of full-time earnings of the employed population’. This approach was developed by the pilot missions on employment of th£ILO: ‘Poverty therefore emerges as the most compelling aspect of the whole employment problem in Colombia’ [ ILO, 1970, para. 217]. The poverty in question is not simply low absolute standards of living, but low standards relative to the average prevailing in the society. Hence it merges into the question of income distribution.