Abstract
Experts on national development agree that the ultimate justification for their work is the attainment of a better standard of living by the populations of impoverished countries. Although strategies to achieve this goal vary widely and although most current research focuses on aggregate economic measures such as gross national product growth, the basic expectation is that structural development processes will translate into significant improvements in the living conditions of the majority (Hirschman, 1958; Myint, 1964; Furtado, 1971). One of the few points of agreement in the area of development is that poverty is a direct result of unemployment or underemployment and, hence, that overcoming poverty requires the mass incorporation of the working-age population into modern industrial employment (Myrdal, 1957; Cardoso, 1969). An expert of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA) makes the point as follows:
