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Environmental economics in poor countries: the current state and a programme for improvement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 July 2008

Partha Dasgupta
Affiliation:
Faculty of Economics, Cambridge University, Cambridge CB3 9DD, UK; and Beijer International Institute of Ecological Economics, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Box 50005, S-104 05, Stockholm, Sweden
Karl-Göran Mäler
Affiliation:
Beijer International Institute of Ecological Economics, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Box 50005, S-104 05 Stockholm, Sweden; and Stockholm School of Economics

Extract

People in poor countries are for the most part agrarian and pastoral. In 1988 rural people accounted for about 65 per cent of the population of what the World Bank classifies as low-income countries. The proportion of the total labour force in agriculture was a bit in excess of this. The share of agriculture in gross domestic product in these countries was 30 per cent. These figures should be contrasted with those from industrial market economies, which are 6 per cent and 2 per cent for the latter two ratios, respectively.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © 1996, Cambridge University Press

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