ABSTRACT
Most people in the developing regions are either cultivators, farm labourers, or relatively small-scale producers of services or manufactured goods in the countryside. In 1970, 75 per cent of the population of low-and middle-income countries lived in rural areas; by 1992, this share had fallen somewhat to 64 per cent. In the low-income countries, the share of the rural population in 1992 was still 73 per cent (World Bank 1994: Table 31, pp. 222-3). By 1993 there were over 2.2 billion people involved in agriculture as producers, while another 800 million lived in rural areas. As we know, there is a strong inverse relationship between a nation’s level of per capita income and the size of the rural population: 78 per cent of the population in nations with per capita income below US$400 per year were located in the rural sector, whereas in the ‘upper middle income countries’ with per capita income above $1,601 per year, the rural population accounted for 35 per cent of the total population.
