Cities in Africa, Asia, and Latin America expanded at an astonishing pace after 1945. Many doubled or even tripled in size in a single decade (Table 33.1). In 1920 three out of every four of the world’s urban inhabitants were concentrated in Europe and North America; by 2000 more than 60 percent of the world’s urban population was concentrated in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In 1950 there were only eight megacities (5 million or more inhabitants), and only two were in developing countries. Of the fifty-nine megacities anticipated to exist by 2015, forty-eight will be outside North America and Europe.

What caused this urban explosion? First, the overall population growth in the developing nations was critical. Urban residents gained substantially from a medical revolution that provided improved health care but only gradually began to reduce the size of their families. Second, more than half of all urban growth came from rural migration. Manufacturing jobs in the developing nations were concentrated in cities. In 1980 half of all the industrial jobs in Mexico were located in Mexico City.

Newcomers have streamed to cities even when industrial jobs have been scarce, seeking any type of employment. Sociologists call this phenomenon urbanization without industrialization. Many migrants were pushed into cities. As large landowners found it more profitable to produce export crops, their increasingly mechanized operations reduced the need for agricultural laborers. Ethnic or political unrest in the countryside can also push migrants into cities. These push factors have been particularly strong in Latin America, with its neocolonial pattern of large landowners and foreign companies that exported food and raw materials. Many young people left home for the city to work in construction or domestic service, while many others found informal work.

Most of the exploding numbers of urban poor earned precarious livings in a bazaar economy comprised of petty traders and unskilled labor. In the bazaar economy, which echoed early preindustrial markets, regular salaried jobs were rare and highly prized, and a complex world of tiny, unregulated businesses and service occupations predominated. Peddlers and pushcart operators hawked their wares, and sweatshops and home-based workers manufactured cheap goods for popular consumption. This bazaar economy grew prodigiously as migrants streamed to the cities, as modern industry provided too few jobs, and as the wide gap between rich and poor persisted. These workers typically lack job security, unemployment insurance, and pensions.

After 1945 large-scale urban migration profoundly affected traditional family patterns in developing countries, just as it had during the Industrial Revolution. Particularly in Africa and Asia, the great majority of migrants to cities were young men; women tended to stay in the villages, creating a gender imbalance in both places. There were several reasons for this pattern. Much of the movement to cities was temporary or seasonal. The cities were expensive, and prospects there were uncertain. Only after a man secured a foothold did he marry or send for his wife and children.

For rural women, the consequences of male out-migration to cities were mixed. Asian and African women found themselves heads of households, faced with managing the farm, feeding the children, and running their own lives. In the East African country of Kenya, for instance, one-third of all rural households were headed by women in the late 1970s. African and Asian village women had to become unprecedentedly self-reliant and independent. As a result, rural women in Africa and Asia began to gain some rights and opportunities, but they faced limitations as well.

Migration patterns in Latin America differed from this model. Whole families generally migrated, often to squatter settlements, much more commonly than in Asia and Africa. These families frequently belonged to the class of landless laborers, which was generally larger in Latin America than in Africa and Asia. Migration was also more likely to be permanent. Another difference was that single women were as likely as single men to move to the cities, in part because women were in high demand as domestic servants. Some women also left to escape male-dominated villages where they faced narrow social and economic opportunities. Even so, in Latin America urban migration seems to have had less of an impact on family patterns and on women’s attitudes than it did in Asia and Africa.

In cities the concentration of wealth in few hands has resulted in unequal consumption, education, and employment. The gap between rich and poor around the world can be measured both between the city and the countryside, and within cities (Map 33.2). Similar disparities existed for consumption and leisure as well as access to health care. Wealthy city dwellers in developing countries often had more in common with each other than with the poorer urban and rural people in their own country. As a result, the elites have often favored globalization that connects them with wealthier nations.