Theory of cumulative causation by Gunnar Myrdal

What is the cumulative causation?

 The events are interdependent to each other, effect in one event is caused by a change in other events, it completes the cycle, this is called cumulative causation.
Myrdal gave the theory of cumulative causation based on the observation of the Western country's development. Western countries developed service sectors economy from subsistence agriculture economy.
 As per Myrdal, due to locational advantage, some growth center grows faster. These growth center work as a suction pump, it provides a better return to the investor hence it sucks:

• Capital and best raw materials from the surrounding location
• It provides better job opportunity to the best brain hence it sucks best professional from surrounding locations
• It provides better services such as schooling, hospital, and communication as compared to surrounding location hence it sucks the best elements from surrounding. 

These growth centers keep growing at the cost of surrounding growth and left no resource, brain, capital, raw material to surrounding locations. These process further increase,

• As it offers economies of scale.  
• Agglomeration factors further decreased the cost of production in the growth center
• Low transportation cost in these centers

What is the backwash effect? 

Pulling off all dynamic elements to the growth center from the surrounding location is called the backwash effect.

backwash effect

What is the spread effect? 

During the time, the growth center or the big cities began to decrease due to pollution and congestion. It leads to pulling out the resources from big cities and there is a spread of development of the surrounding region around this growth center. This effect is called the spread effect.

spread effect

As per Myrdal regional imbalance increase with the growth of one region. There are four stages in Myrdal model:

• No integration: In this stage, the location is distance placed. Integration in this stage not possible due to no fast way of communication. 
• Differentiation: in this stage, urban areas are spreading, in this stage backwash effect takes place. 
• Dispersion stage: In this stage, the spread effect started, development activities in periphery areas take place.
• Integration.  In this stage, human settlements in big cities started declining due to a declining resource base.

stage 1 no integration

stage 4 (fully integration)

• Tweet
• Share
• Share
• Share
• Share

Related Post