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Industrialization and urbanization are critical paths to modernization for a country or region. The coordination of industrialization and urbanization fosters the development of a regional economy. In academic circles, this is usually measured by the IU ratio (ratio of labor industrialization rate to urbanization rate) and the NU ratio (ratio of non-agricultural employment rate to urbanization rate). However, these methods are inapplicable to large countries’ inland areas. The traditional methods failed to explain the real situation and produced contradictory results. The IU ratio shows that industrialization lags behind urbanization, while the NU ratio shows that industrialization is ahead of urbanization. According to studies conducted in the Sichuan Province of China, through comparison with Jiangsu Province, it is found that the non-agricultural employment growth is not dependent on the development of local industrialization, and rural-urban migration is not entirely dependent on the evolution of the non-agricultural employment rate. Other factors that promote urbanization, such as the country’s capital policies and funds for migrant labor force transfer, should also be considered. This research attempts to improve the traditional methods for measuring the degree of urbanization and industrialization synergy in inland areas. The new empirical approach can effectively identify the critical characteristics of urbanization in inland provinces, such as the development of non-agricultural employment with external assistance and urban migrants “unrelated to employment opportunities”. Based on these key characteristics, it can provide the basis for local urbanization policy formulation.

The Jakarta metropolitan region (the Jakarta megacity), located in the fourth most populous country in the world (Indonesia), is the largest urban agglomeration in the Global South—continues to grow, especially in its outer suburbs (Bekasi Regency). The governments (Central and Local) tend to implement an urban-biased policy (UBP) to connect Bekasi Regency into global production networks and boost Bekasi Regency’s income. However, previous case studies of China and Vietnam have revealed that the UBP increases economic disparities between urban and rural areas. Therefore, this study probes urban–rural economic disparities and their characteristics at a microregional level (desa/kelurahan) in the Bekasi Regency. The methods applied in this study are geographically weighted regression (GWR), RULT index, and quantitative zoning. The results show that almost all desa/kelurahan in the high poverty (HPv) cluster are rural neighborhoods (desa/kelurahan with rural characteristics). By contrast, only 5% of desa/kelurahan with urban characteristics are HPvs, while the remainder are in the low poverty (LPv) cluster. Rural neighborhoods with HPv tend to have a high percentage of households dependent on agriculture. Thus, empirical results (with a case of a Global South megacity suburb) further support previous evidence that the UBP has caused urban–rural economic disparities.

This study exploits a natural experiment to investigate the impact of land reform on the fertility outcomes of households in rural Ethiopia. Public policies and customs created a situation where Ethiopian households could influence their usufruct rights to land via a demographic expansion of the family. The study evaluates the impact of the abolishment of these pronatal property rights on fertility outcomes. By matching aggregated census data before and after the reform with administrative data on the reform, a difference-in-differences approach between reform and non-reform districts is used to assess the impact of the reform on fertility outcomes. The impact appears to be large. The study estimates that women in rural areas reduced their life-time fertility by 1.2 children due to the reform. Robustness checks show that the impact estimates are not biased by spillovers or policy endogeneity.

It is a contentious issue whether large scale mining creates local employment, and the sector has been accused of hurting women’s labor supply and economic opportunities. This paper uses the rapid expansion of mining in Sub-Saharan Africa to analyze local structural shifts. It matches 109 openings and 84 closings of industrial mines to survey data for 800,000 individuals and exploits the spatial-temporal variation. With mine opening, women living within 20 km of a mine switch from self-employment in agriculture to working in services or they leave the work force. Men switch from agriculture to skilled manual labor. Effects are stronger in years of high world prices. Mining creates local boom-bust economies in Africa, with permanent effects on women’s labor market participation.

BackgroundEmerging countries continue to suffer gravely from insufficient healthcare funding, which adversely affects access to quality healthcare and ultimately the health status of citizens. By using panel data from the World Development Indicators, the study examined the determinants of health care expenditure among twenty-two (22) emerging countries from the year 2000 to 2018.MethodsThe study employed cross-section dependence and homogeneity tests to confirm cross-sectional dependence and to deal with homogeneity issues. The Quantile regression technique is employed to test for the relationship between private and public health care expenses and its determinants. The Pooled mean group causality test is used to examine the causal connections among the variables.ResultsThe outcome of the quantile regression test revealed that economic growth and aging population could induce healthcare costs in emerging countries. However, the impact of industrialization, agricultural activities, and technological advancement on health expenses are found to be noticeably heterogeneous at the various quantile levels. Unidirectional causality was found between industrialization and public health expenses; whereas two-way causal influence was reveled amongst public health expenditure and GDP per capita; public health expenditure and agricultural activities.ConclusionIt is therefore suggested that effective and integrated strategies should be considered by industries and agricultural sectors to help reduce preventable diseases that will ultimately reduce healthcare costs among the emerging countries.

Industry affiliation provides an important channel through which trade liberalization can affect worker earnings and wage inequality between skilled and unskilled workers. This empirical study of the impact of the 1988-94 trade liberalization in Brazil on the industry wage structure suggests that although industry affiliation is an important component of worker earnings, the structure of industry wage premiums is relatively stable over time. There is no statistical association between changes in industry wage premiums and changes in trade policy or between industry-specific skill premiums to university graduates and trade policy. Thus trade liberalization in Brazil did not significantly contribute to increased wage inequality between skilled and unskilled workers through changes in industry wage premiums. The difference between these results and those obtained for other countries (such as Colombia and Mexico) provides fruitful ground for studying the conditions under which trade reforms do not have an adverse effect on industry wage differentials

The fact that hazardous metals do not bio-degrade or bio-deteriorate translates to long-lasting environmental effects. In the context of evidently rapid global industrialization, this ought to warrant serious caution, particularly in developing countries. In the Republic of Fiji, a developing country in the South Pacific, several different environmental studies over the past 20 years have shown levels of lead, copper, zinc and iron in sediments of the Suva Harbor to be 6.2, 3.9, 3.3 and 2.1 times more than the accepted background reference levels, respectively. High levels of mercury have also been reported in lagoon shellfish. These data inevitably warrant thorough assessment of the waste practices of industries located upstream from the estuaries, but in addition, an exposure and health impact assessment has never been conducted. Relevant government departments are duty-bound, at least to the general public that reside in and consume seafood from the vicinities of the Suva Harbor, to investigate possible human effects of the elevated hazardous metal concentrations found consistently in 20 years of surface sediment analysis. Furthermore, pollution of the intermediate food web with hazardous metals should be investigated, regardless of whether human effects are eventually confirmed present or not.

The shift from feudalism to industrial capitalism was generally accompanied by an increase in social mobility. We ask whether such an increase has occurred in a developing nation currently undergoing rapid industrialization, Indonesia. It has, at least as measured by a declining intergenerational correlation of education. To highlight the effects of economic growth on intergenerational mobility, we contrast Indonesia's experience with that of Bangladesh, where industrialization has proceeded more slowly and the correlation between parents’ and children's education has been roughly stable. We also examine potential causal channels for the rising educational mobility we find in Indonesia, but cannot identify specific pathways related to above-average school building or rapid industrialization in a region.