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Learning Objectives
- Define a developing country and discuss how incomes are compared across countries.
- State and explain the general characteristics of low-income countries.
- Discuss what is meant by economic development.
Throughout most of history, poverty has been the human condition. For most people life was, in the words of 17th-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Only within the past 200 years have a handful or so of countries been able to break the chains of economic deprivation and poverty.
Consider these facts:
- Over a third of the world’s people live in countries in which total per capita income in 2005 was less than $610 per year; 85% live in countries in which total per capita income in 2005 was $2,808 or less. Adjusting for purchasing power, the per capita income levels would be $2,531 and $7,416, respectively. The latter numbers compare to per capita income in high-income countries of over $30,000.
- Babies born in poor countries are 16 times more likely to die in their first five years than are babies born in rich countries.
- About a quarter of the populations of low-income countries is undernourished.
- About 40% (over 50% for women) of the people 15 years old and older in low-income countries are illiterate.
- Roughly one-fourth of the people in low-income countries do not have access to safe drinking water.
Clearly, the high standards of living enjoyed by people in the world’s developed economies are the global exception, not the rule. This chapter looks at the problem of improving the standard of living in poor countries.
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