Harnessing the Private Sector for Social Development

We examine an NGO-led project of rural industrialisation that brings together the comparative advantages of rural villagers and private sector firms to improve local employment and community health outcomes. Based on household survey data from Northeast Thailand, we find that the industrialisation project raises the income earning and other prospects of the workers. Significantly, the employment exhibits a pro-poor bias, thereby providing jobs for people whose poverty might place them at increased risk of out-migration and HIV infection. In resource-constrained developing countries, mobilising resources from the private sector may assist in overcoming important development challenges. Programs such as this add another important policy tool in the fight against poverty and HIV/AIDS.