DOCUMENT RESUME ED 461 711 UD 034 727 AUTHOR Eastwood, Robert; Lipton, Michael TITLE Rural-Urban Dimensions of Inequality Change. Working Papers. INSTITUTION United Nations Univ., Helsinki (Finland). World Inst. for Development Economics Research. SPONS AGENCY Swedish International Development Cooperation Authority, Stockholm. REPORT NO UNU/WIDER-WP-200 ISBN ISBN-952-455-086-5 ISSN ISSN-0782-8233 PUB DATE 2000-09-00 NOTE 75p.; Prepared within Project on Rising Income Inequality and Poverty Reduction: Are They Compatible? Sponsored by UNU/WIDER and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). AVAILABLE FROM UNU/WIDER Publications, Katajanokanlaituri 6 B, 00160, Helsinki, Finland. E-mail:
[email protected]. PUB TYPE Reports Research (143) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC03 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Developing Nations; *Educational Opportunities; Equal Education; *Health Conditions; Population Trends; Poverty; Rural Areas; *Rural Urban Differences; *Socioeconomic Status; Urban Areas; Urbanization IDENTIFIERS Access to Health Care; *Income Disparities; Urban Bias ABSTRACT This study reviews evidence that overall within-country inequality, although showing no trends from 1960-80, increased after 1980-85, focusing on developing and transitional countries. It explores trends in rural-urban, intrarural, and intraurban inequality of income, poverty risk, health, and education, and the offsetting trends in inequality hypothesis (OTI) .OTI claims that underlying the overall inequality trend has been a tendency for rising intrasectoral inequality to be offset by falling rural-urban inequality. Analysis of the limited available data indicate that there is no such pattern. Different regions and countries experienced different, though substantial, trends and timings of change in different types of rural-urban inequality. For example, rural-urban gaps in mean consumption and poverty incidence have narrowed in Africa and widened in Asia, but they show no global trend, usually moving in the same direction as overall inequality.