Rural Tanzania, one of the poorest areas of the world, has been the arena for bold social and economic official experiments which have commanded world attention. Yet, because of the lack of data, these experiments have never been properly assessed. This book, based upon large scale surveys designed and conducted by the authors, first describes how the representative houeshold is diversified over a range of economic activities including migration, then identifies and measures inequality using an advanced approach to the measurement of living standards and finally shows the extent to which inequality exists within as opposed to between villages. The study also investigates the impact of government initiative such as cooperative farms, land reform, education and health services and shows how some have had effects which run counter to their declared objectives. This book will be of particular interest to development economists.