Waves of modernizing forces, such as the commercialisation of new technology, have been pressing major change upon rural communities in the Third World. But has modernization created greater poverty and inequality? A unique data set generated from eleven surveys during 1966-87 in a typical rice village in the Philippines, illustrates a pattern of socio-economic change shared by many lowland rice areas in the Philippines as well as in other Asian economies. The authors present the lessons drawn from thirty years of detailed empirical research.