ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with two issues: first, how rural nonfarm employment changes over time; and second, what are the primary variables that seem to influence those changes. Changes in rural industry and other forms of rural nonfarm employment are relevant to a large number of issues in developing countries. In the case of People’s Republic of China, the dramatic expansion of rural economic activity that followed the policy changes liberalizing rural employment and marketing in the late 1970s and early 1980s appears to have caused rural nonfarm employment to increase sharply. The possibility of change within a socialist system is suggested not only by the countries in the lower-right quadrant but also by the one socialist state that is nowhere near the other socialist states. The influence of the overall level of economic activity, including as it does the influence of many other variables such as literacy and growing urban demand, is not surprising.
