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Urbanization, roads, and rural population change in the Ecuadorian Andes

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Abstract

Like many developing countries Ecuador has experienced extensive urbanization in the pase twenty-five years as well as a shift in the pattern of rural population change between the 1960s and 1970s. Rural places with difficult access to cities (without roads and located far from cities) gained population during the 1960s but lost population during the 1970s. Rural places with easy access to cities (i.e., located near cities or on all-weather roads) continued to gain population during the 1970s. The explanation for the differential ability of rural places to retain their population during the 1970s focuses on increases in labor circulation by peasants and growth in the numbers of small, urban-oriented manufacturing and agricultural enterprises in accessible rural areas. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for policies to reduce rates of rural-urban migration.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Cook College, Dept. of Human Ecology, Rutgers University, P.O. Box 231, 08903, New Brunswick, N.J.

    Thomas K. Rudel

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  1. Thomas K. Rudel
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  2. Samuel Richards
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Additional information

Tom Rudel is an associate professor in the Departments of Human Ecology and Sociology at Rutgers University. He recently publishedSituations and Strategies in American Land Use Planning (Cambridge, 1989) and is at work on a study of deforestation and development in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Sam Richards is a graduate student in the Sociology Department at Rutgers University. He is currently carrying out NSF supported dissertation research on the Catholic Church and socioeconomic development in Eduator.

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Rudel, T.K., Richards, S. Urbanization, roads, and rural population change in the Ecuadorian Andes. Studies in Comparative International Development 25, 73–89 (1990). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02687180

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