Introduction

Abstract

In 1976 the ILO’s World Employment Conference adopted the so-called ‘basic-needs approach’ to development. According to this approach, ‘development planning should include, as an explicit goal, the satisfaction of an absolute level of basic needs’.³ The main policies that seemed to be implied by this approach were land reform, and the application of appropriate technology in order to increase productive employment, on the one hand, and the provision of government services such as education and health, in order to improve the condition of the poorest in society, on the other. A relatively neglected implication of the basic-needs approach has been the question of product choice and appropriate products. It is to a greater knowledge of this aspect that this book is intended to contribute. Although it is the first — to our knowledge — that deals systematically with product choice in developing countries, two groups of researchers have contributed in a fundamental way to the analytical framework which is the basis of the eight case-studies included in this volume.

All but one of the case-studies were published as mimeographed World Employment Programme research working papers. Their full titles are (in the same order as the chapters): A. Mubin and D. Forsyth, ‘Appropriate Products Employment and Income Distribution in Bangladesh: A Case Study of the Soap Industry (Oct 1980): C. O. Fong, ‘Consumer Income Distribution and Appropriate Technology: The Case of Bicycle Manufacturing in Malaysia (Mar 1980); T. S. Papola and R. C. Sinha, ‘The Consumption Behaviour and Supply Conditions of Metal Utensils in India: A Study in the Basic Needs Framework’ (1982); G. A. Aryee, ‘Income Redistribution, Technology and Employment in the Footwear Industry (Jan 1981); W. J. House, ‘Technological Choice, Employment Generation, Income Distribution and Consumer Demand: The Case of Furniture Making in Kenya’ (May 1980); J. James, ‘Product Choice and Poverty: A Study of the Inefficiency of Low-income Consumption and the Distributional Impact of Product Changes’ (May 1980): M.-A. Landgren-Gudina, ‘Technological Choice, Employment Generation, Income Distribution and Consumer Demand: The Case of Weaning Food in Ethiopia’ (1981); M. Thobani, ‘Passenger Transport in Karachi: A Nested Logit Model’ (1982).

Wouter van Ginneken and Christopher Baron are both staff members of the International Labour Office.