Poverty, Rural

The majority of the world's poorest people live in rural areas. Three quarters of the estimated 1.2 billion persons subsisting on an income below US$1 per day are classified as rural residents. Rural poverty remains the dominant form of deprivation for the world's poor, and despite rapid urbanization, is projected to continue for many years to come. While many of the rural poor are subsistence farmers, eking out a living on marginal lands in the poorest nations of the world, poverty associated with rural locations and livelihoods is not unique to the least developed countries, but is also over-represented in advanced industrial and postindustrial nations. Poverty in the core and periphery, within and across nations, is closely linked as is rural and urban poverty. Sources of rural poverty are numerous, ranging from both natural and man-made environmental problems to relations of inequality and exploitation between nations and between transnational actors such as multinational corporations, world, and parastatal organizations, and the governments and populations of poor regions and nations. Theories of underdevelopment and dependency demonstrate the links between poverty, inequality, and development in rural regions across the globe.