To What Extent Do You Agree That an Outflow of Rural Young People to the Urban Areas Has an Adverse Effect on the Rural Areas in the Developing Countries? Explain Your Answer

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To what extent do you agree that an outflow of rural young people to the urban areas has an adverse effect on the rural areas in the developing countries? Explain your answer. In developing countries, the rural areas are those places that have poor living conditions and the main occupation in farming. The people there have little access to proper education and healthcare facilities. Also, as farmers, their income is very low and unstable, because of the seasonal harvest.

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Some of the rural villagers may be even facing the problem of unemployment. Therefore, this has encouraged large numbers of rural young people to migrate to the urban areas, with the hope of searching for better jobs to earn more money to support their families at home. I agree with this statement because this causes more harms than benefits. The rural people left are unable to break out of poverty cycle and the rural areas may be confiscated

Firstly, when there is an outflow of rural young people to the urban areas, there is a positive effect on the rural areas of developing countries because the rural people can break out of poverty cycle. When the rural young people migrate to the urban areas, they are able to seek better-paying jobs that are stable and have high wages. In China, a rubbish-cum-recycling collector working in the city is able to earn, what the average rural farmer gets in a year, in just one month.

With more money, these rural-urban migrants are able to remit money back home. Their families are greatly benefitted, because they can have a lot more money for better education, advanced healthcare facilities and investments in agriculture such as green technology. Children can now pursue higher levels of education, everyone is able to get adequate medical attention and farmers are now able to cultivate crops with greater productivity and generate higher income.

With better standards of living conditions, rural people can find more better-paying jobs with their academic qualification. Therefore, we can see the link between rural-urban migration and rural people breaking out of the poverty cycle. However, it may be argued that when there is an outflow of rural young people to the urban areas, there will be an adverse effect on the rural areas because instead of breaking out of the poverty cycle, poverty may increase and standards of living fall even further than before.

When large numbers of rural young people migrate to urban areas, there are astronomical numbers of economically dependent people such as elderly, women and children left in the rural villages. So, productivity of crop cultivation will drop drastically, with lesser able-bodied farmers to tend to the farms. This will imply that there will be a decrease in the supply of food to the towns and country. Furthermore, there will be fewer customers engaging in rural services and shops insofar as their business deteriorates or closes.

The unemployment rate hence increases and life will be difficult for these owners of small businesses. Thus, rural-urban migration of young people will be disadvantageous to those living in rural areas. In addition, this large scale movement of young people from rural to urban areas can lead to the confiscation of rural land. When the standard of living in rural areas is further decreased caused by young people migrating, the rural people left will be unsatisfied and want to follow the young people into urban areas, as part of a vicious cycle.

This will lead to lower birth and natural growth rates in rural areas. With a lower birth rate and smaller population, the rural areas are then unable to attract new industries and the rural land will be unoccupied in the long run. These unused agriculture land may be rented out for commercialization purposes to prevent wastage of land, however not knowing that it is illegal. In China, this is a criminal offense because the government wants to ensure the production of food from crops. In 2000, there were only about 20 land confiscation cases but it has increased to 180 in 2010.

As such we can see the harms of young people migrating from rural to urban areas as it causes land confiscation in an indirect manner. To sum it up, an outflow of rural young people to the urban areas may help the rural people left to break out of poverty cycle, but it is not always true as seen from the counter point above. Also, this may lead to a vicious cycle of rural people abandoning rural areas to look for more employment opportunities and better standards of living. Therefore, I agree to this statement to a large extent.

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