Showing papers on "Rural area published in 1989"

Squatter Citizen: Life in the Urban Third World

Abstract: Drawing on their own skills, making the best use of limited resources and forming their own community organisations, the poor account for most new city housing in the Third World. However, the city rejects them, denying their right to water, education and health care. The first chapter provides the context for analysis, describing the development of Third World cities in the colonial and post-colonial periods, and the gap that continues to grow between the "legal' and the "illegal' city. Other chapters examine government intervention policies, environmental problems, the process of finding housing, and trends in urbanisation. Finally, developments and problems in smaller urban areas and surrounding rural areas are outlined, and the question of urban bias is addressed. -after Authors

A price to pay: The impact of user charges in ashanti-akim district, Ghana

Abstract: The authors investigated the impact of user charges upon health service utilization in the Ashanti-Akim district of Ghana since the introduction of fees for service in 1985. The district has a population of 183100 of whom approximately 70% live in rural areas. The data analyzed in the study are from government institution monthly outpatient returns and registration books. The user charges have successfully recovered 15% of Ministry of Health expenditure and urban use has regained its pre-fees level. Some of the potential advantages of user charges however have not been realized because the health infrastructure as a whole has not changed enough. Moreover problems of equity and affordability should not be ignored. The rural population in the district seems to have suffered a disproportionate drop in utilization since the introduction of user charges and some people simply cannot afford services.

Women in the Third World: Gender Issues in Rural and Urban Areas

Abstract: Social scientists critique womens roles and their status in developing countries. They specifically look at their roles in child care housework subsistence farming employment and health care. They address status by examining wider societys value and meaning given to womens roles which in turn reflect and influence gender relations. They highlight the ideological and practical gender inequality that is incorporated into development. The majority of women in this book are low income women since poverty is widespread in developing countries and most of the literature covers low income women. They 1st examine women in rural areas then those in urban areas. 5 major themes relevant to gender questions are used. Households present the 1st theme since they are the fundamental site for sexual division of labor. The next theme is reproduction meaning transformation of good and services for household use (nonincome generating activities) as well as welfare family planning health care and urban housing and services. Reproduction in the former meaning limits women from partaking in public life and politics. The 3rd theme is production which refers to all income generating activities. In rural areas however it is often more difficult to distinguish between production and reproduction because of the intermediate category of subsistence farming. The 4th theme incorporates both policy and planning. They look at agricultural and rural development planning; urban planning including housing programs service provision and community development projects; and government and development agencies consideration of women and womens work. The last theme is rural-urban migration. They attempt to make generalizations about each major developing country region: Latin America the Caribbean Middle East and North Africa Sub-Sahara Africa South Asia and Southeast Asia.

Rural and Small Town America

Abstract: This study conducted for the National Committee for Research on the 1980 Census is one in a series presenting analyses of data from the 1980 U.S. census. This volume provides a detailed picture of rural America and includes chapters on population distribution; small-town growth and population dispersal; age and sex composition; race and ethnicity; household growth and structure; fertility; labor force and employment; industrial structure and change; the farm population; income and poverty; characteristics of cities towns and rural areas; and the persisting importance of residence. "The authors find that size of place is a critical demographic factor affecting population composition... the distribution of poverty... and employment opportunities....Pointing out that rural life is no longer synonymous with farming they explore variations among nonmetropolitan populations. They also trace the impact of major national trends--the nonmetropolitan growth spurt of the 1970s and its current reversal for example or changing fertility rates--on rural life and on the relationship between metropolitan and nonmetropolitan communities." (EXCERPT)

The Determinants of Early Age Human Capital Formation: Evidence from Brazil

Abstract: It is now widely acknowledged that the low human capital base is the most serious developmental constraint in developing countries.1 Investments in child schooling add to the stock of human capital and therefore to future income and living standards for society as a whole and among subgroups of the population. Families invest in children's education for many reasons, among them the expectation that education will increase the child's future earnings. Governments also invest in education in order to raise the skill level of the labor force and, hence, to increase worker productivity and income in society at large. Thus, the analysis of the determinants of investment in schooling among different subgroups in the population and levels of education attained are of major concern for policymakers. This study explores the effects of several economic, demographic, social, and regional factors on the educational attainment of Brazilian children between the ages of 7 and 14 years. In particular, it examines the determinants of school participation, grade attainment, and dropping out of school. The data came from the 3% public use national sample of the 1980 Brazilian Population Census containing 3,526,000 individuals in 808,000 households.2 Out of this large data base a random subsample was drawn of 200,000 individuals in 40,000 households, selected so as to represent all Brazilian states and urban and rural areas. From this latter subsample we obtained a subset of 23,700 children aged 7 to 14 to whom we matched their parental and household data. The following section gives some background information on Brazil. Section III describes in more detail the sample used in this analysis. Section IV focuses on the determinants of school participation. Section V examines the impact of household and regional charac-

Social network integration and language change in progress in a rural alpine village

Abstract: The quantification of communication network integration can provide information valuable to the study of language change in very small rural communities. The adaptation of urban and communication network methodology for rural alpine social structures establishes a framework for the study of variation leading to change based on individual usage for the dialect of Grossdorf in Vorarlberg, Austria's western-most province. This approach is particularly relevant when study of aggregate group behavior has failed to yield results due to small sample size or group internal inconsistency. (Field methods, language networks, variation and change)

The Transition to Capitalism in Rural America

Abstract: I N I904 Max Weber read a paper comparing European and American agrarian society at the International Congress of Arts and Sciences, held as part of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri. Weber, who had traveled across America for three months before the meeting, visiting both cities and farms, contrasted the feudal social relations still found in parts of Europe with capitalist agriculture in the United States. European peasants had traditionally produced to support a seigneurial class and to supply their own needs. "The past two thousand years," he concluded, "did not train the peasant to produce in order to gain profit." In contrast, "the American farmer is an entrepreneur like any other" and had long since become "a rationally producing small agriculturist." This was especially true in northern wheat-producing areas, where a farmer was "a mere businessman" who believed in "absolute economic individualism." The Civil War had destroyed the "aristocratic, social, and political centers of the rural districts," thereby consolidating capitalist agriculture.' The issues Weber raised have been a mainstay in agricultural history for over half a century. Early debates revolved around questions of subsistence agriculture and self-sufficiency on northern farms in the colonies and the new nation and the timing of the development of commercial

The Adequacy Of Physician Supply In Small Rural Counties

Abstract: Prologue: Roughly one-quarter of Americans live in rural areas. Rural Americans share the same basic needs as do urban dwellers, one of the most fundamental of which is the need for health care. There is growing attention on the rural health scene, including the health status of rural residents, the status of rural hospitals, and the numbers of physicians that choose to practice in rural areas. In this article, David Kindig and Hormoz Movassaghi examine physician supply in small rural counties—those having fewer than 10,000 residents. Over the period 1975–1985, they find, the number of physicians per 100,000 residents grew almost three times faster for the entire United States than for rural areas, despite overall growth in supply. “To consider this [issue],” they state, “we must have some standard or norm of availability that is desired or optimal for these locations. To our knowledge, no such standard exists.” Kindig, who received his medical degree and a doctorate in experimental pathology from the Uni...

The changing rural environment and the relationship between health services and rural development.

Abstract: Author summarizes today's changing rural America and the challenges that health services researchers and policymakers face in relating the rural environment to the problems and possibilities of rural health services delivery

Social Context of Human Immunodeficiency Virus Transmission in Africa: Historical and Cultural Bases of East and Central African Sexual Relations

Abstract: The literature relating to the social context of sexual relations in East and Central Africa has several implications for the heterosexual transmission of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Colonially created cities in the region still discriminate economically and socially against women. Rapid urbanization is occurring, but migrants maintain strong ties with rural areas. Traditional attitudes towards marriage and sexuality affect urban behavior in the extent of marital stability, the frequency of polygyny, and the emotional bond between spouses. Ethnic groups in Kampala and Nairobi exemplify the cultural foundations of two forms of sexual relations found in the region, one characterized by prostitution and the other by small circles of interchanging lovers. The first results in a more rapid spread of HIV through the urban population and outwards into rural areas. Each pattern exerts unique constraints on behavioral change and requires different prevention campaigns.

Pattern of Dental Caries in an Adult Rural Population

Abstract: A study was conducted amongst 1,131 randomly selected persons aged 15–65 years in a rural area of Kenya, having minimal access to dental care. A relatively low prevalence of frank cavitation was found

Rural Entrepreneurship: One Key to Rural Revitalization

Abstract: The changing structure of traditional rural industries and the impacts of those changes on rural communities have been sources of concern to many groups interested in the welfare of rural areas. Income and employment declines in agriculture, other natural resourcebased industries, and in manufacturing have left few rural areas and sectors of the rural economy untouched (Henry, Drabenstott, and Gibson; Drabenstott, Henry, and Gibson). Additional employment opportunities are needed to utilize labor and management resources in rural areas. As a result, there is increasing interest in the potential for rural entrepreneurs to start new businesses and generate economic activity. Most new rural businesses are expected to be small, and many may be started by persons employed in farming or other traditional rural occupations on a part-time or full-time basis. Unfortunately, the failure rate of new, small businesses is high. Information about factors contributing to successful entrepreneurship may reduce failures and costs for those who would be entrepreneurs. More needs to be known about the personal traits and behavior patterns associated with successful entrepreneurs, about the influence of community institutions on the success rate of entrepreneurs, about the types of business that are sustainable in rural areas, and about the potential of entrepreneurs to make rural communities viable.

Rural hospitals: a literature synthesis and health services research agenda.

Abstract: The economic decline of rural America and an inability to respond to pressures created by the evolving American health care system are making it increasingly hard for rural hospitals to survive.

Depression among elderly people. A psychosocial study of urban and rural populations.

Abstract: A total of 317 elderly subjects randomly selected among people living in the community in 1 urban and 2 rural areas were studied by means of a semistructured clinical interview, the Social Adjustment Scale, and the Beck Depression Inventory. An emerging trend was demonstrated towards a higher rate of prevalence of depression among females and urban residents. Widowhood, absence of a confidant, poor education and financial difficulties (only among urban elderly people) were significantly correlated with rates of depression. Physical impairments and diseases were also associated with depression, independently of whether subjects lived alone. The findings are discussed using a psychosocial frame of reference.

Chinese Social Welfare: Policies and Outcomes

Abstract: China in the 1980s is in the midst of a social revolution as far–reaching as either Land Reform or the early years of the Cultural Revolution. After four decades of championing the superiority of state monopolies and the evils of private ownership, the leaders of the Politburo have decollectivized agriculture, advocated commodification of land values, encouraged private trade and investment, and explicitly agreed that it is good if a few get rich first. Rural citizens in particular have responded with alacrity to this privatization of work and the retreat of the Party and the state from the daily management of agriculture. The household farm has become the basic unit of production for the first time since 1952, and private entrepreneurs have transformed the structure of rural commerce and manufacturing. Average incomes in rural areas trebled in the decade after 1977 and the economic gap between rural and urban citizens noticeably narrowed.

Informal and formal health care systems for the rural elderly.

Abstract: The preceding sections have been an attempt to touch on a broad spectrum of issues related to the health care of older persons living in the rural United States. This article was intended to be an overview of research issues and, as a consequence, we have been unable to go into great depth in any one area of inquiry; we have certainly not included all of the research questions on areas where present knowledge is incomplete. In broad terms, we suggest that future rural health services research on the elderly be concentrated on the following five major categories of inquiry: --A better understanding of the location and distribution of the elderly in rural America --A better understanding of the life conditions affecting the health of the rural elderly --A better understanding of the health status of the rural elderly --A better understanding of the development, delivery, and impact of health services for the rural elderly, and --A better understanding of the methodological and theoretical difficulties of studying the health and health care of the rural elderly.

The Role of Nonfarm Activities in the Rural Economy

Abstract: Until quite recently it has been conventional to equate, in a rough way, the rural economy with the agricultural economy. Rural households, containing anywhere from 30 to 70 per cent of the nation’s population, were envisaged as having as their primary function the production of food and fibre for the home market and one or more crops for the export market. In addition to farm production, household members might as secondary activities be engaged in a certain amount of agricultural processing, transporting and marketing.

Contemporary Politics of Environment in Thailand

Abstract: Background A casual reader of the Thai press will have noticed that environmental issues have become important to a variety of groups in recent years, including farmers, urban dwellers, the liberal intelligentsia, and the country's ruling elite. This reflects related trends concerning degradation of the environment itself, the response of these different groups to those trends, and the nature of political conflict and debate in Thailand. In particular, heightened interest in the environment coincides with an increasing integration of rural populations into mainstream political discourse. The majority of Thais live in rural areas and depend on rural livelihoods. They have been drawn into political conflict over the environment by the mounting pressure that modernization exerts on the sources of their sustenance. In the North, for example, logging and encroachment into upland forests has motivated farmers to take action to protect the watersheds that feed their fields. Farmers' protests against timber-cutting in more than ten provinces in the North and elsewhere were important components of the rising environmentalist pressure that resulted in the cabinet's drafting royal decrees banning all logging nationwide on January 10, 1989. Two other factors were also significant in convincing the government to take this remarkable step against the politically powerful local logging companies. One-certainly the most significant-was the public shock that followed the deaths of several hundred villagers in deforestation-related mudslides in southern Thailand in November 1988. The sec-

Rural America. Unique opportunities for health care delivery and health services research.

Abstract: A general deterioration is occurring in the quality of life of rural Americans, and it is affecting the quality of health and mental health service delivery. About 24% of the U.S. population lives in nonmetropolitan areas where the citizens are older, less well educated, have lower incomes, and are more homogeneous in terms of race and ethnicity. Medicare and private insurance discriminate against rural services in their reimbursement policies, and there is a shortage of health personnel in rural areas. However, there has been renewed congressional action to meet rural needs. Both the House and Senate have established rural caucuses, and an Office of Rural Health Policy has been established in the federal executive branch. Legislative successes were achieved between 1985 and 1988. Rural initiatives will provide psychology with unique opportunities in the next several years.

Is the Chinese family planning program "tightening up"?

Abstract: The Chinese official policies on family planning (FP) have not been tightened at least for the time being as compared with the period 1984-86. The messages from the 1988 meetings of the Population Advisory Committee can be summarized as follows: 1) while the population policy should emphasize the critical importance of birth control it should also be acceptable to the majority of the peasants and the workstyle of propaganda and education workers should be adapted more closely to the needs of local populations; 2) the FP policies -- including the provincial regulations which were revised after 1984 in most cases to broaden the categories of couples who qualify for a 2nd child--should be continued. In rural areas couples whose 1st child is a daughter are allowed to a 2nd birth with spacing; 3) the increase in birth rates in 1986-87 was a result of the combined effects of changes in the age structure decentralization of the economic and administrative system and declines in the ages at marriage and childbearing; 4) the efficiency of the FP network should be strengthened by improving the workstyle of FP cadres and increasing the quality and quantity of FP personnel among other means. The current official policies on FP appear to have been relaxed. For example the policy of allowing rural only-daughter-households to have a 2nd birth was introduced in 1984 in limited areas only and was officially extended to all rural areas in the 1st half of 1988. It is true that the importance of population control and efficiency of implementation of FP is being re-emphasized: however this should not be regarded as evidence of a shift to a harder line policy.

Recent Spatial Restructuring in Zhujiang Delta, South China: A Study of Socialist Regional Development Strategy

Abstract: China's agricultural reforms and open door policy adopted since 1978 have had impact on the country's economic structure, population characteristics, and urban development. This paper examines the spatial implications of such changes in the light of the development of Zhujiang Delta located in the coastal region of South China. Market-oriented agricultural production, rural industrialization, migration of surplus farm labor, and the spread of small towns in the rural areas are some of the consequences of the reforms and are placed in the perspective of the coreperiphery theory of regional development. It is argued that the hybrid “center-downward”and “periphery-upward”approach in spatial development was adopted because it was politically more adaptable to the Chinese objectives of economic development, which continue to uphold Marxism, Maoism and Communist Party leadership. Through careful control of the destination of the rural migrants in conjunction with the policy of small town development, C...

Saving America's Countryside: A Guide to Rural Conservation

Abstract: A new edition of the book that received the Historic Preservation Book Prize and the American Society for Landscape Architects' Honor Award Since publication of the first edition of Saving America's Countryside in 1989, the fight to save America's rural resources has met with much success. Approaches considered experimental just a decade ago-greenways and heritage areas, for example-are now widespread. Yet at the same time, such disquieting developments as continuing suburban sprawl, the weakening of federal laws, and the so-called property rights movement all suggest that work remains to be done. Saving America's Countryside was the first and is still the only comprehensive, step-by-step guide to protecting the natural, historic, scenic, and agricultural resources of a rural community. The authors show how to organize a conservation effort, inventory available resources, pass effective new laws, set up land trusts, take advantage of federal programs, and change public attitudes. The thoroughly revised and updated second edition reports on changes in conservation over the past eight years and adds a chapter on making economic development compatible with rural conservation. It includes new case studies, more than fifty new illustrations, and a section on heritage tourism. As in the previous edition, the detailed case studies document a variety of successful-and often surprisingly innovative-conservation efforts by residents of rural communities throughout the United States.

the “healthy reserve” and the “dressed native”: discourses on black health and the language of legitimation in South Africa

Abstract: The need of industrial capital to generate a supply of cheap African labor led to policies which both undermined and preserved the rural support base of African farmers. The encouragement of an educated class of African workers, essential for the maturation of industrial development, was accompanied by restrictions in social and economic mobility that maintained the social dominance of whites. These conflicting strategies have produced impoverishment among both urban and rural African populations. Yet these conditions have been effaced by the construction of powerful stereotypes or myths about African urban and rural life, myths that have preserved the ideal of a healthy labor reserve, while explaining the African worker's lack of social and economic advancement in terms of their own maladjustment to industrial civilization. This paper examines the role of medical authorities in valorizing and contributing to the longevity of these myths in the face of contradictory evidence and alternative constructions of African rural and urban life.[South Africa, myths, medical ideas, legitimation]

The incidence of active tuberculosis in a large urban area

Abstract: The authors reviewed all cases of active tuberculosis newly reported to a population-based registry between 1970 and 1985 to compare a large urban area with the mostly rural remainder of the province of British Columbia, Canada. Although incidence rates have declined steadily in the rural area, they have not done so in the urban area. Within the urban area, there was a striking relation between tuberculosis incidence and socioeconomic level. Incidence rates in those born in Canada were observed to be higher for men than for women and higher for men who had never married than for those who had ever married, a difference no longer present within census tract groups. The greatest difference in incidence was between unemployed and employed men. Cases in the poorest census tracts more commonly had advanced, infectious pulmonary disease and were more likely to be alcoholics. The incidence of tuberculosis in the poorest census tracts did not decline as rapidly as in other areas. The characteristics of the disease in the poorest urban census tracts suggest the possibility of selective migration of persons at risk for tuberculosis and of continuing transmission of the disease and call for imaginative case-finding and treatment programs to address this problem.