Why poor people stay poor: a study of urban bias in world development c.1

The great division in the world today, says Michael Lipton in this outstandingly important book, is not between capitalist and communist, black and white, east and west, or even between rich and poor nations. It exists within the poor countries themselves, and it is the division between city and country.

In developing countries especially, wealth is drained from the country, where a little investment would produce big increases in desperately needed food production, and channelled into the cities where people who are often far better off put it to far less productive uses. As a result, while many of the poorest countries have considerably increased their output of wealth since 1945, the poorest people have grown no richer and have sometimes been thrust into even deeper poverty.

Why Poor People Stay Poor examines how this unhappy situation came about. Politicians, planners and experts respond to pressures, which are strongest from their urban neighbours. Ideologies-liberal, Marxist, populist-have also helped national leaders to convince themselves that such an inequitable process was right and necessary. In reality, in terms of efficiency as well as justice, it has had terrible consequences in hunger and thwarted development.