Get Those Kids Off the Farm

That's the lesson of China in recent years, of the US in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and now of Africa.

Via Chris Blattman, this is the summary of a research paper entitled: "What is driving the 'African Growth Miracle'?

We show that much of Africa’s recent growth and poverty reduction can be traced to a substantive decline in the share of the labor force engaged in agriculture. This decline has been accompanied by a systematic increase in the productivity of the labor force, as it has moved from low productivity agriculture to higher productivity manufacturing and services. These declines have been more rapid in countries where the initial share of the labor force engaged in agriculture is the highest and where commodity price increases have been accompanied by improvements in the quality of governance.

In the US the improvements in machinery after the Civil War, added to the rapid immigration from Europe (including two of my grandparents), enabled us to grow.