Rural development policy addresses the welfare of rural households and communities. With a majority of the world's poor located in rural areas, the resilience of rural poverty in industrialized countries, and a significant share of environmental degradation the byproduct of rural poverty, the design of effective rural policies remains an important theme. There is a long history of economic thought as to how to address rural development. In the last 15 years, the context for rural development has changed markedly. At the same time, there have been major theoretical and empirical advances in household behavior, institutional economics, community behavior, and endogenous regional growth. They allow us to rethink approaches to rural development and to experiment with novel initiatives.
