An Analysis on the Role of Government’s Structural Financial Services on the Sustainability of Rural Settlements : A Case Study in Darab Area Villages, Iran

Abstract

Villages, as the first human settlements, have experienced different stages of growth or stop during the process of their historical evolution and also in their encountering with development of technology and change in structural fundamentals of societies, which has sometimes caused the increase or decrease of population of these residential points due to migration of villagers from the area. In this regard, specially in developing countries, attention to environmental improvement and rural development has been among basic priorities of the statesmen of such countries. In this line, rendering welfare and infrastructure amenities and services with the purpose of getting villagers to stay in these population centers in the line with sustainable development of villages are among the major objectives of planners and statesmen. In this research, which is a correlative-analytical one, it is attempted to study the role and effect of government services in decreasing rural migrations and consequently sustainability of population in rural settlements in Darab region, an environ of Iran, using data gathered through the field study and survey. The statistical population includes 15 villages enjoying and 15 villages lacking government services and financial facilities, and using Cochran sampling method, 220 people have been selected as sample size. The questionnaires have been randomly distributed in villages, and the correlation between variables has been measured using Spearman correlation coefficient. The results indicate that there is no significant relation between rendering services to villages and the sustainability of population in the studied villages. In other words, in spite of providing service and rendering welfare-fundamental facilities by the government agencies to the studied villages, the presence of economic problems such as lack of capital and financial resources required for production, widespread poverty, high rate of unemployment in villages, and the existence of relative surplus of labor in agriculture department have caused migration of villagers of the area to cities and therefore, evacuation of villages from population and their  sustainability.