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114 Int'l Lab. Rev. 69 (1976)
The Urban Informal Sector: Concept, Measurement and Policy

handle is hein.journals/intlr114 and id is 77 raw text is: International Labour Review, Vol. 114, No. 1, July-August 1976 The urban informal sector: concept, measurement and policy S. V. SETHURAMAN' Introduction Since the term informal sector was first used in a study on Ghana 2 and then taken up in the report of the ILO/UNDP employment mission to Kenya 3, it has gained considerable currency in the literature on development policy in general and employment policy in particular. Despite, or perhaps because of, the growing interest in the subject-as evidenced by the number of research studies undertaken in recent years-a good deal of confusion has arisen as to what the expression really means. Not surprisingly, therefore, the policy prescriptions differ. But it is not only the terminology itself that has evoked criticism; in other quarters there are misgivings about the whole approach and the usefulness of the concept in promoting employment and economic growth. The basic reason for the introduction of this term in the Kenya employ- ment mission report followed from the now widely recognised fact that it takes a very long time for the benefit of general development policies to trickle down to the poorest sections of the population. Effective development needs to be focused directly on a specific target population, and the employment mission considered that perhaps the most important such target group in urban areas was what it described as the informal sector. Another reason-and one that now tends to be overlooked-for concentrating development efforts on this sector was that besides promoting employment and more equitable income distribution it could lead to a more efficient allocation of resources, at least in 1 International Labour Office. 2 Keith Hart: Informal income opportunities and urban employment in Ghana , in Journal of Modern African Studies (London), Mar. 1973, pp. 61-89. An earlier version of this article was presented to the Conference on Urban Unemployment in Africa held at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, in September 1971. 2 ILO: Employment, incomes and equality : a strategy for increasing productive employ- ment in Kenya (Geneva, 1972). Copyright © International Labour Organisation 1976

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