title: Rural and urban population changes and the stages of economic development:  a unified approach.
abstract: The long-term aspects of the process of economic development and urbanization are examined.  A model is presented that shows the dynamics of economic development from the earliest to the more advanced stages.  "The model is able to explain not only the occurrence of a downturn in the rural population after the initial phase of population growth both in rural and urban areas, but also the delayed occurrence of such a downturn in many present-day developing countries.  The author then focuses [on] the later stages of economic development and explains two alternative courses of urbanization, namely, the reversal process and the continual-growth process, as special cases of the general model; which of the courses occurs depends on the value of the elasticity of urban agglomeration-economies."
mesh_terms: D003710:Demography; D019049:Developed Countries; D003906:Developing Countries; D004467:Economics; D004641:Emigration and Immigration; D005843:Geography; D018803:Models, Economic; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D011153:Population; D011154:Population Characteristics; D011157:Population Dynamics; D012106:Research; D012424:Rural Population; D014505:Urban Population; D014507:Urbanization
keywords: Demographic Factors; Developed Countries; Developing Countries; Economic Development; Economic Factors; Economic Model; Geographic Factors; Migration; Migration, Internal; Models, Theoretical; Population; Population Characteristics; Population Dynamics; Research Methodology; Rural Population--changes; Rural-urban Migration; Spatial Distribution--changes; Turnaround Migration; Urban Population--changes; Urban Spatial Distribution; Urbanization; World