Showing papers on "Rural area published in 1977"

Blood pressure distribution in a rural Ghanaian population

Abstract: Hypertension and related complications appear, from clinical impression, to be increasing problems in urban Ghanaians. In early 1973 we conducted a blood pressure survey in 20 rural Ghanaian villages to determine the prevalence of hypertension, in comparison with studies done in Accra residents and black Americans. Rural Ghanaians had mean systolic and diastolic blood pressures which were lower at all ages than the urban groups. 2·5% of the subjects aged 16 to 54 years had diastolic blood pressures of 95 or higher mm Hg. These findings are discussed in view of the proposed hypertension control programme in Accra. We conclude that hypertension is not a significant health problem in rural Ghanaians and that large-scale hypertension case-finding and intervention programmes should be confined to urban populations.

Nutrition and health in low income urban areas of the third world

Abstract: Data are presented which illustrate the profound differences that exist in health and nutrition status between different income groups in cities of the developing world. The intra‐urban differences cited seem to be greater than urban to rural differences. Adequate services, data collection and program planning is hampered by the inability of decision makers to recognize squatters as official city residents, entitled to municipal services. The dependence on wage income, the instability of employment, and the high residential densities contribute to the onset of disease and malnutrition for the urban squatter family.

The Quality of Life in Rural America

Abstract: Attempts to measure quality of life (QOL) in rural America have gone through three stages, focusing first on economic well-being, later on a broad array of so-called ob jective indicators, and finally on subjective evaluations. All remain important to gaining a comprehensive understanding of the QOL in rural America. An analysis of objective con ditions points to several areas of deprivation among rural people, especially economic well-being and the receipt of institutional services, but suggests they are better off than urban Americans with respect to their material and social environment. Rural people's subjective assessments are strik ingly consistent with the objective conditions of their environ ment. However, they evaluate their overall QOL more positively than do urban Americans, possibly because they give greater weight to the relatively intangible aspects of their environment. A cautious look at the future suggests the current population turnaround and prospects of resource scarcity are critical ...

Population, Prosperity and Poverty: Rural Kano, 1900 and 1970

Abstract: 1. The economic relationship between city and countryside in 1900 2. Indirect rule as rural non-rule 3. The Kano Close Settled Zone 4. A brief introduction to Dorayi 5. The consequences of persistent population pressure: a summary 6. The evidence for economic inequality 7. The attitude to farmland 8. The married son 9. The failure to migrate 10. The rich men 11. Extreme poverty 12. The big house 13. From slavery to freedom: farm-slavery in Dorayi List of References Index.

Women in the Informal Labour Sector: The Case of Mexico City

Abstract: In recent years, the informal labour sector has increasingly represented a testing point for theories of development The proliferation of informal jobs in developing countries has been considered alternately a stage in the process of development and a blind alley leading a country back into underdevelopment But social scientists and policymakers have rarely recognized that the majority of those left out of the formal occupational structure are women It is, however, very difficult to establish the heuristic boundaries of the informal labour sector, particularly with respect to women Are we referring to the intermittent part-time activities of women outside the household both in cities and in rural areas? But men also engage in such activities, for example, as street peddlers Is the unpaid work of the wife and young unmarried daughters in a family enterprise such as a store an informal job? If unpaid labour is to be included in the informal labour sector, then women’s voluntary community service and their unpaid domestic labour must also be taken into account Moreover, since informal labour also comprises work not regulated through a contract, all low income, non-contractual jobs registered as formal occupations, such as paid domestic service, belong to this classification Many low income and low productivity jobs included in the formal occupational structure and registered in national censuses, even when such a contract does exist, can be considered as a continuation of informal jobs as well and thus must be analysed within the informal labour sector This paper assumes that the nature of the informal labour sector in a developing economy is a direct outgrowth of the type of industrialization a country is undergoing Within this framework, this paper explores the degree of occupational choice that women have within the structural margins of employment

The impact of colonialism on health and health services in Tanzania.

Abstract: This article is about the problems of malnutrition and disease in a rural area of an underdeveloped country, Tanzania. The particular way in which health problems were conceptualized during the colonial era, the structure of the medical services established, and the effects of health care on the health status and size of the rural population of Songea District in Tanzania are shown in the article to have been determined by the economic, social, and political requirements of German and British colonial rulers rather than by the health needs of the African population. Colonial economic policy emphasized the production of cash crops for export, whether by African peasant farmers or by European plantation owners. To provide workers for the plantations, a system of labor migration was instituted. Songea District became an area that supplied male workers to other parts of the country, with grave consequences to the health and nutrition of the women and children left behind. Domestic food production was neglected by Africans forced to migrate in search of cash to pay taxes and by those enganged in the cultivation of cash crops. Extensive malnutrition and persistent ill health related to poor diet are thus traced directly to capitalist underdevelopment of th Tanzanian economy and the structural distortions of a dependent relationship between Tanzania and the metropolitan power.

Relations between nutrition and cognition in rural Guatemala.

Abstract: The nutritional status of three and four year old children, as measured by height and head circumference, is related to cognitive performance in four rural Guatemalan villages. The relationships persist when social factors are taken into account. Families in two of the villages participate in a voluntary, high protein-calorie supplementation program. In the other two villages, the families receive a vitamin and mineral supplement with one-third of the calories. Although the longitudinal study still is ongoing there is some evidence that the children who receive the higher calorie supplement (or whose mothers received it during pregnancy and lactation) are most likely to score high in cognitive performance. The results support other animal and human studies that report an association between nutrition and cognitive development. The findings, while not diminishing social environmental explantions of differences in cognitive function, suggest the worth of nutrition intervention programs in rural areas of les...

Relationship between family land availability and nutritional status

Abstract: A study of the relationship between occupation, land owned and/or rented by the family and nutritional status of two‐ and three‐year‐old children was conducted in four rural Guatemalan villages. Families were divided into three occupational groups: salaried agricultural workers, farmers, and skilled workers and merchants. Nutritional status was defined in terms of weight for age. There was a tendency for the children of skilled workers and merchants to have the lowest prevalence of moderate malnutrition. It was found that 76 percent of families classified as farmers controlled less than five manzanas (one manzana = 0.7 hectares). The relative risk of having moderate malnutrition was 2.3 times greater in the two‐ and three‐year‐old children of families with access to less than two manzanas than in those with access to more than five manzanas.

Rural women and the basic-needs approach to development.

Abstract: Focus in this discussion is on the nature of womens work in rural areas why the characteristics of this work are affected by changes in the structure of production the goals of a basic-needs approach to development and some factors likely to determine the efficacy of such an approach for rural women. The modernization of agriculture does not relieve rural women of their long hard day; in fact case studies and other reports have revealed that modernization has meant more hours worked in the fields by women - except for wives of successful capitalizing farmers - whether or not men also worked longer hours. Much of rural womens labor (fetching water and fuel preparing food cooking it child care and general home-making) is likely to remain unmonetized for a long time; their 5-6 hours of womens daily labor are committed to activities that actually handicap them in their search for cash earnings. Changing production structures will merely lead to an unequal exchange between men and women unless some more imaginative form of economic and social engineerings is developed. A basic-needs approach to development must concern itself with production relations and access to assets between the sexes and not just with production relations and access to assets at the level of the domestic unit. Redistribution of land ownership between the sexes might help women but will not provide equitable economic opportunities if the sex-typing of housework and the responsibility of providing food to the family persists. The basic-needs approach must go further and "open up" the production and exchange relations within the household to the wider community.

Planning and the rural environment

Abstract: This book is about the changing fabric of the open countryside: a field neglected by planners who have been preoccupied with the built environment of both town and country. A central theme is the conflict of interest between some of the major rural users and groups. The repercussions for the countryside of changing activities and attitudes in five main areas of rural resource planning are examined: farming, forestry, leisure, and the conservation of wildlife and landscape. Their interactions are then explored in the contrasting environments of the urban fringe and the uplands. Finally, the authors review the development of rural planning, discuss some of the technical and philosophical problems that have emerged, and speculate upon a variety of issues that will shape the countryside of the future. They conclude that the rural environment is changing much more rapidly than many people think; within a generation, many of the characteristics of the present countryside could disappear.

Race and Sex Influences in the Schooling Processes of Rural and Small Town Youth.

Abstract: This paper assesses how race and sex act to determine the educational performance and career aspirations of over 3,000 students enrolled in 23 public schools in Mississippi. The data, collected in 1972, pertain to the schooling experiences of small town and rural students. The results strongly support the conclusions of Wisconsin researchers and others concerning the dynamics of early achievement processes for whites. Moreover, we find that even as of 1972 social origins, academic aptitude, and academic performance facilitated or retarded subsequent interpersonal and aspirational outcomes differently for whites of the two sexes. The Wisconsin model, moreover, yields much poorer explanations of "ambition" among blacks of both sexes and sex differences among blacks are smaller than they are for whites. A major difference by race is that career expectations of blacks depend less on status origins than those of whites.

Residential preferences and migration.

Abstract: For some time now, public opinion polls have revealed Americans’ strong preference to live in comparatively small cities, towns, and rural areas rather than in large cities. However, as Fuguitt and Zuiches (1975) have reported, the majority of people also want these places to be within commuting distance of a large metropolitan city. This research tests the hypothesis that size-of-place and urban proximity preferences are factors in the dispersal of population through migration. A one-year panel survey of Pennsylvania households indicates that only about one household in ten that moved actually attained its preference for a smaller-sized place or a location more distant from a large city. Preferences for smaller-sized places and proximity to a city were not correlated with where people actually moved when the size and proximity of the previous residence were taken into consideration.

Major trauma in the rural mountain west

Abstract: A disproportionately high percentage of trauma fatalities occur in rural areas. Almost half of these fatalities occur after arrival at a community hospital. A review of the initial evaluation and management of major trauma victims in rural community hospitals in the intermountain West revealed a surprisingly high incidence of departure from well defined standards. Reducing the magnitude of this rural hospital component of trauma facilities will require application of the same standards of initial evaluation and management which have proved effective in major medical center emergency department settings.

Deinstitutionalization of mental health services in rural areas.

Abstract: While the deinstitutionalization movement in both urban and rural areas has been plagued by problems, the author feels that they are exaggerated in rural communities and are complicated by such factors as the essentially urban nature of the deinstitutionalization model, the unique demographic conditions of rural America, and the lack of anonymity in rural communities. However, rurality also has several advantages for the deinstitutionalization movement, including the existence of a strong sense of community, and the increased opportunity for the therapist to know personally the patient, his family, and his friends and thus to make more humane decisions concerning his treatment.

Crisis Intervention Programs For Disaster Victims: A Source Book And Manual For Smaller Communities

Abstract: This monograph has been written, in part, as a consequence of the growing interest in the delivery of emergency mental health services to residents of disaster-stricken areas. It is designed to provide knowledge of both a theoretical and a practical nature which can aid personnel on the state and local level in planning and carrying out disaster-related mental health programs that are efficiently and effectively organized. In short, our focus in the report is on making recommendations for post-disaster mental health programs based on systematic research findings. Although the report attempts to take into account the characteristics of the smaller community--thr rural area or small town relatively far removed from the resources of the large urban complex--the findings and recommendations it contains sould be of even wider interest and applicability.

The meaning and measurement of urban surplus labour

Abstract: The term urban surplus labor is defined and its magnitude is measured using Tanzania as a case study. The sensitivity to alternative specifications of labor force participation, the measurement of the aggregate rate of open urban unemployment, and labor utilization in the own account sector are examined. A sectoral misallocation model is established to estimate the rate of employed surplus labor for urban Tanzania. The sensitivity of the estimate is compared to alternative specifications of the rural income criterion. Based upon data from a national household survey, it is concluded that 10 percent of the urban labor force can be classified as at the level of open unemployment. It is further concluded that the appropriate income criterion for the measurement of urban surplus labor is marginal product in the rural areas.

Kural and urban attitudes toward welfare

Abstract: Mary H. Osgood, MS, is Instructor in Rural Sociology, College of Agricul ture, Pennsylvania State University, University Park. Research for this article was supported by funds from Title V of the Rural Development Act of 1972. The author wishes to thank R. Richard Ritti and his staff for making data appearing in this article available to her for analysis and Kenneth P. Wilkinson and Joan S. Thompson for their comments. RURAL ATTITUDES Rur^l poverty in the United States census received welfare, whereas in continues to be more acute, though Philadelphia County, 35 percent of less visible, than urban poverty. As these families received welfare.3 Be distance from an urban center incause federal program allocations are creases, so does the incidence of povusually based on current participation erty. In the most distant and sparsely rates, low participation serves to lower settled counties, the poverty rate is the amount of federal money allocated 2V2 times that in metropolitan areas; to rural areas, nearly half (44 percent) of the na tion's poor reside in nonmetropolitan areas.1 Despite the high incidence of rural poverty, however, urban areas Why are welfare^ programs in urban receive a greater percentage of govareas used more heavily than those in ernment assistance funds than their rural areas? Implicit in many proposed rural counterparts. In 1974, nonmetroexplanations is the assumption that politan areas received only about onefundamental differences exist between fourth of the federal outlay for inrural and urban attitudes toward wel come security and other welfare profare. It has been suggested that these grams.2 attitudinal differences are manifested Reasons for lower outlays in rural ln such ways as the following: adher areas relate both to program characence to the concept of local control teristics as well as to certain rural bemay prevent certain rural areas from havioral tendencies. Some programs applying for federal grants; local gov have built-in biases against rural areas, ernments may be unable—or unwilling For example, programs set up under —to master the bureaucratic proce the Comprehensive Employment and dures involved in getting projects Training Act (CETA) calculate benefunded; and administrative policies fits on the basis of unemployment and case-by-case practices may tend rates, which are particularly misleadto be more restrictive in rural than ing indicators of poverty in rural areas ln urban areas. because of the way in which they are Other explanations have attributed reported and computed. Furthermore, low rural participation rates to certain because an area must have a populafactors presumably found in nonmet tion base of 100,000 in order for the ropolitan areas, such as a lack of local government to be a prime sponknowledge about available programs, sor or administrator for CETA proinadequate financial support for local grams, rural areas usually fall into public assistance offices, scarcity of groupings administered by the state trained personnel, lack of confiden rather than by a local government tiality for the recipient (everyone more likely to be aware of local probknows and talks about the fact that lems and needs. a certain family is on welfare), apathy However, behavioral tendencies and because the problem of poverty has attitudes in rural areas may have even been serious for so long that its ex more influence than program requireistence becomes accepted as inevitable, ments on the amount of government and community attitudes of oppres money going to these areas. Participasion and aggressiveness toward the tion rates in welfare programs are poor.4 lower in rural than in urban areas. In Are attitudes toward welfare pro Pennsylvania, for example, four of the grams in fact more negative in rural five counties with the highest percenthan in urban areas, thus reducing tages of families on welfare in 1970 program participation rates and cre were in Standard Metropolitan Statisating poverty problems of greater tical Areas (SMSAs). In many less severity? The author examines this urbanized areas, such as Butler question by first reviewing previous County in western Pennsylvania, only studies of attitudes toward welfare 11 percent of the families having an and then by presenting data on rural income below the national poverty urban attitudinal differences from a level as determined by the 1970 U.S. study conducted in Pennsylvania.

Impact of water supply on the incidence of diarrhoea and shigellosis among children in rural communities in Madurai

Abstract: -. Gastrointestinal diseases constitute a major public health problem in India, particularly among infants and pre-school children. The State Governments have been investing large funds under the National Water Supply and Sanitation Scheme for the provision of protected water supply in rural and urban areas. Wells dug, driven, or drilled, as also water from reservoirs treated or untreated, with or without arrangement for overhead tank, piped or otherwise, constitute the usual source. Piped water supply is distributed through street faucets or house connections. The quantity is restricted to meet mainly the drinking water needs of the community. Studies conducted in several countries1"4 have indicated that the effectiveness of the protected water supply in controlling water-borne diseases in a community depends on (a) purity and wholesomeness, (b) quantity supplied, (c) whether the water is supplied within or outside the dwellings, and (d) whether the supply is continuous or not. The present investigation was undertaken to find out how far the public water supplies have controlled water-borne diseases in rural areas using the incidence of diarrhoea (shigellosis) as an index in children under 5 years of age.

Rural life in Victorian England

Abstract: The landowners the farmers the farmworkers industrial workers in the countryside the land agents professional people tradesmen and craftsmen the end of the old order.

Urbanism and Voter Turnout. A Note on Some Unexpected Findings

Abstract: Past literature has been unclear as to the relationship between urban/rural residence and voting turnout. Aggregate analysis of turnout within Illinois reveals a strong tendency for rural areas to have much higher turnout than urban. Furthermore, these rural areas have lower levels of education, income, and industrialization, so that these variables cannot account for higher- turnout levels, nor can the observed patterns be accounted for by the historical pattern of political culture. Several theoretical arguments which might explain the findings are examined. Political scientists have always been concerned with all types of political participation, and voter turnout is undoubtedly the most widely studied and substantively important measure of participation. One variable which is potentially associated with turnout-residence in an urban or rural area-has received rather less attention than the research to be presented here would suggest is warranted. Most general treatments either ignore the urban-rural dimension as a relevant factor or else repeat the oft-cited but seldomdocumented generalization that turnout is higher in more urban areas. The summary of findings in Milbrath (1965, pp. 128-130) cites findings on both sides of the question but leaves the impression that large urban areas probably have higher rates of participation. On the other hand, Nie, Powell, and Prewitt (1969) find no relationship between urbanization and turnout. Yet the notion that urban voters are more likely to participate has become entrenched in the literature and is flatly asserted in countless textbooks. Thus, when a thorough aggregate analysis of electoral participation in West Virginia (Johnson, 1971) found that the most rural and economically underdeveloped areas in a rural and underdeveloped state tended to have high levels of turnout, the author apparently felt it necessary to present those findings as a "deviant case." It shall be one purpose of the research here to determine whether the West Virginia case is indeed unique. The results of the most thorough empirical analysis of political participation in the U.S. (Verba and

Political Structure of Rural America

Abstract: Historical rural American political behavior has revolved around the three themes of radicalism, conservatism, and apathy. Post-World War II research on urban-rural differ ences reveals little support either for contemporary rural radicalism or greater political apathy in rural areas. However, rural citizens, particularly farmers, exhibit more conservative political orientations than metropolitan populations. The reapportionment revolution of the 1960s, which proponents thought would reduce rural advantage in state and national government, has not noticeably altered social policy outputs of state legislatures or the Congress in a more liberal, urban- oriented direction. The Electoral College currently under- represents rural influence in electing the president, although various alternatives tend to discriminate in reverse. Future trends suggest a diminishing political difference between rural and urban populations. Exposure of rural residents to mass media and the interchange of populations between geogra...

On a dynamic model for rural development in Africa

Abstract: Over the past decade a pervasive concern of African political leaders, development planners, and social scientists has been to find ways and means of improving the lot of those in the rural areas: they comprise the bulk of the population of the tropical African states and continue in the 1970S to be socially and economically the most deprived social group. 1 Despite the ‘highest priority’ assigned to rural development in the policy documents of many African governments, neither the allocation of public funds nor the implementation of development strategies have been energetically directed towards improving the living standards of the rural masses. Equally, the recognition of the need for a new development model by an increasing number of scholars has yet to produce adequate guidance for those African regimes which are seeking to transform the rural areas.