RIMISP Centro Latinoamericano para el Desarrollo Rural

Este artículo estima el impacto de las ciudades en el desarrollo económico de las comunidades rurales en Chile siguiendo un enfoque de acceso a mercados. El efecto de la proximidad a ciudades en el desarrollo de las comunidades rurales es analizado estimando el impacto del acceso a mercados en la población, y empleo agrícola y no-agrícola de las comunidades rurales. Usando censos de población y datos satelitales, encontramos que un 10% de mayor acceso a mercados indujo un crecimiento de un 10 a un 14% en la población de las comunidades rurales. Adicionalmente, elasticidades de mayor magnitud fueron encontradas para el empleo no-agrícola que en el caso del empleo agrícola. Nuestros resultados apoyan la hipótesis de cambio estructural y diversificación de la economía rural para comunidades rurales con mayor acceso a mercados.

El objetivo del presente documento es analizar el comportamiento del gasto público del Gobierno Central dirigido a la juventud rural, con especial énfasis en los esfuerzos de inclusión económica (financiera, productiva y laboral), en Colombia, Ecuador, México y Perú.

We describe the patterns of economic growth and social progress in Colombian “functional territories”. Unlike political/administrative divisions that emerge at least partly for historical reasons unrelated to economic interactions, functional territories reflect the patterns of spatial agglomeration and economic interactions in a territory. Using a novel definition of functional territories, our analysis reveals significant fragmentation of economic interactions: close to 66% of municipalities (holding about 20% of the country’s population) have no significant links to neighboring areas. A set of comparatively more (but still only partially) integrated and more populous municipalities have stronger links between them. This “rural-urban” space holds just around 31% of total population. The rest of Colombians are in “urban” or “Metropolitan” highly-populated and more integrated clusters. We describe these territories along two dimensions: economic growth or “dynamism” and progress in social indicators or “inclusion”. To do so we propose a simple conceptual framework that organizes the diverse inputs that might help boost these outcomes. Larger and more urbanized agglomerations exhibit visible advantages in these inputs. Moreover, long-run institutional determinants best help differentiate territories. Consistent with this, larger and more urbanized agglomera-tions have better outcomes, especially when measuring economic activity. Also, more dynamic places tend to be the more inclusive ones.

The main empirical fact is that regional inequality has been highly persistent despite the large changes that have taken place and the modernization of the society. We show that regional inequality is highly correlated with signicant within-country dierences in economic and political institutions, which are themselves highly persistent over the same period. We propose a tentative political economy theory of why the spatial distribution of institutions and economic outcomes has been so persistent over time.

This paper uses use data on the most recent population Censuses to analyse internal migration flows of rural youth in Ecuador, Mexico and Peru, focusing on two questions. First, are rural youth more likely to migrate than the adult population? Second, what are the characteristics of the main poles of expulsion and attraction of young migrants?