Important lessons emerging from the East Asian experience are that the transformation of the structure of a predominantly agrarian, semi-subsistence economy cannot be achieved without substantial increases in agricultural productivity. Second, the structural transformation process must take advantage of the positive interactions between agricultural and industrial development. These interactions depend on the expansion of the marketed share of agricultural output, which enables farm cash incomes to rise. Finally, we emphasize that demography matters in that increasing the growth of non-farm employment relative to the growth of the total labor force can accelerate structural transformation. Download full-text discussion paper .
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