Bhumi is published by the Town & Country Planning Research Institute of University Moratuwa, Sri Lanka and La Trobe University, Australia.Bhumi serves a wide range subject areas directly indirectly related to Urban Rural Planning, Economics, Development, Governance, Management, Environmental Resource Construction, Housing, Infrastructure, Design, Politics, Technology etc.

Fo re st ry B rie fin g N um be r 4, M ay 2 00 3 Introduction A major reason for the high failure rate of rural development forestry projects is the weak economic incentives for local forest users and other stakeholders to participate in sustainable forest management (SFM). In view of the high dependency of the rural poor on forests for their livelihoods, this has serious poverty implications. ...

BACKGROUND The disparity between government health expenditures across regions is more severe in developing countries than it is in developed countries. The capitation subsidy method has been proven effective in developed countries in reducing this disparity, but it has not been tested in China, the world's largest developing country. METHODS The convergence method of neoclassical economics w...

A central question in human development is what causes health inequalities over the life cycle. We link a harsh environment in the teen years to individuals’ health conditions almost 40 years later, and employ Regression Discontinuity Design to make a causal inference between adolescent adversity and long-term health. Specifically, we exploit the mandatory “send-down” policy during China’s Cult...

This paper considers the present state of applied economics and the difficulties of integrating its findings and insights with those of other social sciences. The philosophical basis of social science is re-considered as a route to resolving these difficulties. Without a more integrated narrative about how our social systems work, applied economics, and all applied social sciences, run the subs...

Africa is urbanizing rapidly, and this creates both opportunities and challenges. Labor productivity appears to be much higher in developing-world cities than in rural areas, and historically urbanization is strongly correlated with economic growth. Education seems to be a strong complement to urbanization, and entrepreneurial human capital correlates strongly with urban success. Immigrants pro...

This paper provides evidence concerning political participation (turnout, awareness, attendance at meetings, campaign involvement, voting) and its relation to local governance (targeting of public services) in a developing country, based on a rural household survey in West Bengal, India. We find that reported participation rates varied remarkably little with socio-economic status, with the exce...

This paper examines the relationship between household emigration and short-term crisis in a mid-19 century rural, Tuscan community. Based on a detailed reconstruction of individual and household life-histories, this study demonstrates the strong association between household emigration and different kinds of short-term stress, whether economic, epidemiologic, or household related. Despite some...