One of the most important tendencies with a direct bearing on poverty reduction is the overall pattern of
growth and structural change. As noted in the first section, China’s recent growth has been along the classic
Kuznets-style trajectory, with an increase in the share of the manufacturing sector in both output and employment.
A crucial feature of such a positive tendency is agrarian transformation. It is evident from Chart
3 that the share of agriculture in
both output and employment has
declined since the early 1980s. This
is different from a number of other
developing countries (including
India) where the share of agriculture
in employment remains high. So,
the ability of the Chinese growth
pattern to generate more productive
and remunerative employment outside
agriculture played an important
role. In addition, per worker output
in agriculture increased dramatically
from the early 1980s, reflecting
the institutional changes described
earlier. What is significant is that
it continued to increase at a rapid
rate thereafter, such that it nearly
doubled in the decade after 1995.
This has clearly played a very important
role in rural poverty reduction,
dwarfing the effect of particular
poverty alleviation schemes, but
0.00
10.00
20.00
30.00
40.00
50.00
60.00
70.00
80.00
1960
1963
1966
1969
1972
1975
1978
1981
1984
1987
1990
1993
1996
1999
2002
2005 0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
450
Agriculture, value added (% ofGDP)
Employmentin agriculture (% oftotal employment)
Agriculture value added per worker (constant 2000 US$)
Chart 3.
China: Agriculture in GDP and employment
Source: Groningen Total Economy Database,
http://www.conference-board.org/economics/database.cfm
12 DESA Working Paper No. 92
it is necessary to remember that it is the specific pattern of agricultural growth in China that mattered. The
growth was broad-based and widely shared because of the egalitarian land distribution as well as the simultaneous
creation of non-agricultural employment opportunities.