This Working Paper explores the relationship between migration, remote rural areas (RRAs) and chronic poverty in India and is part of a series of ODI/CPRC working papers entitled 'Spatial poverty traps: what are they and what can be done about them?'.
New thinking on rural employment is needed to create more and better rural jobs
* Growth in agriculture is essential, and growth in the rural non-farm economy is especially important.
* Job prospects improve as education, skills, health and early nutrition levels rise.
* Rural-urban migration (whether temporary or permanent) opens new opportunities and also helps tighten rural labour markets.
* With rising productivity and wages, it becomes easier to push for better labour standards, to end to child labour and correct gender inequalities.
This background paper for the World Development Report 2007 focuses on the question of how rural labour markets and migration can be made to work better for poverty reduction.
