Poor rural households, technical change and income distribution in LDC"s

Final PES covers the period 1/77-12/79 and is based on an attached special evaluation (XD-AAJ-315-A) conducted by A.I.D."s Research Advisory Committee (RAC). The project was submitted as an unsolicited proposal by Purdue, Cornell, and Michigan State (MS) Universities. The project areas selected were Sierra Leone and Nigeria (MS), Indonesia and the Philippines (Cornell), and Brazil (Purdue). As planned, three reports and one summary report were produced. Much of the data used were obtained through surveys or studies conducted prior to the submission of the project proposal. The RAC team found an apparent lack of uniformity and coordination in the type of data used and in the analysis of it and a failure to analyze the policy implications of the project"s findings. Despite these shortcomings, however, the RAC team judged the study worthwhile because it presented the most detailed data available from several world locations on the relationship of technology to income levels and distribution and on the relationship of education, land, age, location, and other variables to income. The principal investigators (PI) at two of the institutions changed several times, leading to a loss of responsibility to the project and illustrating the difficulties in obtaining a consensus in projects involving several contractors. In the future, it is recommended that contractors assure that the original PI remain with the project; that project objectives be stated concisely; and that the reporting procedure be improved with interim targets identified in the project paper and used as the measure of project progress. To improve the use and dissemination of project results, an executive summary will be prepared by 1/31/82 and distributed to USAID/S and others. If funds permit, additional analyses focusing on the impact of trade, taxation, and agricultural policies (especially those affecting incentives to producers) will be performed.