Poverty And Urbanization

In order to understand the phenomenon of urbanization and relate it to poverty and development we have to first define and understand what urbanization is. The ongoing relationship between urbanization and poverty has been the subject of interest for many years now. In this paper I shall discuss the relationship between urbanization, poverty and development and I will be using a case study from India to serve as an example that illustrates the effect of urbanization on less developed countries.

First we should start with defining what urbanization is. Urbanization is the extensive and rapid shift of a population from rural to urban areas. It happens because of an extensive increase in the number of populace or because of the resettlement of

Firstly, the phenomenon of rapid urbanization is more common amongst developing countries than others, because by default the less the income of an individual the more they would want to increase it by moving to urban areas and taking part in the industrialization process to raise their average annual income. Secondly, urbanization is considered as part of a larger economic development process. Sometimes urbanization can be a huge aid to economic development and speed up the process, and in other times it can impede it and cause a country’s economy to deteriorate. For instance, according to the International Monetary Fund; in the following figure we’ll find that in rural areas poverty is evidently higher than in urban areas although the cost of living in urban cities is much higher.

It is not a simple linear relationship, but rather dependent on the infrastructure and institutional settings of a country are. There are however certain solutions that were suggested to alleviate the problem of poverty and increase urbanizational development. “Removing barriers to rural–urban mobility may enable economic growth, but the benefits will be much larger with supportive policies, markets and infrastructure investments.”[] Also, governments of LDCs should use logical and realistic population population estimates when planning and investing in infrastructure and implementing supportive land policies. They also should find more efficient and educated ways to enable forms of urbanization that add to growth, contribute to the decline in poverty and increase environmental sustainability, rather than condoning (or discouraging) urbanization without really understanding and researching where the problem