Why Are Some Countries Poor and Other Countries Rich?
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Why are some countries rich and other countries poor?
The studies show that many inequalities between rich and poor are present whether they are continents, countries or people in the same town. These inequalities are both social and economic.
In the world, there is a contrast between MEDC (More Economically Developed Country), also known as Global North, and LEDC (Less Economically Developed Country) that are located in the Global South. The MEDC are rich countries that high level of development. On the other hand, the Global South countries are having a lot of problem and their population is often very poor.
On the scale of continents, they are also big gaps of wealth. For example, North America is really rich but South America is essentially composed of poor countries. Likewise, they are lot of disparity inside of each the continents. Thus Europe, Romania is much poorer than Switzerland.
On a country scale, it is usual those poor and rich regions are close together. This is the situation in Italy, the northern region that constitute the economic and industrial heart of the country are rich. On the contrary, southern Italy is more rural therefore it is at disadvantaged.
In big cities, there are rich and poor area that are sometimes close. In Mexico, slums are next to modern building.
The wealth gap between countries is measured using the GDP per capita. This indicator allows us to make international comparison. But, it is a measure of the wealth of the inhabitants only in terms of the total wealth of the country; it gives no indication on the living conditions of the inhabitants. However, a country can be rich and people poor because of the lack of equitable redistribution of wealth.
To assess the living conditions of populations, we need to use the HDI. Again, the differences are very strong among developed countries such as Canada (highest HDI in the world) and the Third World such as India (where the HDI is lower).
Developing countries are experiencing considerable economic and social problems linked to low incomes of the state and citizens. Third World populations are thus faced with problems of:
Alimentation: famine, malnutrition
Health: high mortality of babies, low life expectancy
Education: literacy rates are often low because the state cannot afford to educate the very large number of children and the parents cannot send them to school
Employment: Unemployment is very important, especially as the share of young adults (looking for work) is high in the population. Many are forced to work illegally or to engage in “small jobs”
Housing: the living conditions are very difficult, families are forced to live in slums, many without access to clean water or electricity
Southern countries have highly unequal societies: a small minority of very rich and a large majority poor, who live in very precarious conditions, coexist. These glaring inequalities occur particularly in large cities.
The differences between countries (or regions) rich and poor may be explained by climatic causes (the desert-regions are disadvantaged), the relief (mountain regions are often the poorest, such as the Andes in South America) or although the nature of the soil (difficulty of growing on poor soils of the Sahel in Africa). Natural disasters can also worsen deprivation in certain regions (floods in Bangladesh).
The unequal distribution of natural resources (such as water, oil) is also factor of inequality of wealth. Thus, the Middle East (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait) have become very rich thanks to oil, while some African countries have to import everything, which weighs on the state budget.
The success of developed countries is often due to the industrial revolution, which took place in Europe and the United States in the nineteenth century. From this period dates the economic growth of these