Labour and poverty in rural Tanzania

Rural Tanzania, one of the poorest areas of the world, has been the arena for bold social and economic official experiments which have commanded world attention. Yet, because of the lack of data, these experiments have never been properly assessed. This book, based upon large scale surveys designed and conducted by the authors, first describes how the representative household is diversified over a range of economic activities including migration. It then identifies and measures inequality using an advanced approach to the measurement of living standards and showing the extent to which inequality exists within as opposed to between villages. Inequality is then explained by analysing the returns to the activities in which poor and non-poor households are engaged. Finally, the study investigates the impact of a variety of government initatives and shows how some have had effects which run counter to their declared objectives.

The book's findings on the extent and causes of inequality and on the consequences of government initiatives are dramatic and will shift the centre of debate on policies for rural Africa.