Consequences of Poverty

Social
- >850 million in poor countries cannot read or write
- nearly 1 billion don't have access to clean water
- 2.4 billion don't have basic sanitation
- 11 million children <5 die from preventable diseases, especially HIV/AIDS, each year
- low life expectancy
- only basic infrastructure, poor quality roads, small airports and limited port facilities adds to disconnection
- extreme plight of minority groups

Economic
- lack of foreign investment
- 1/5 of the population lives on < $1 a day
- almost 1/2 live on < $2 a day
- poor employment prospects - largely dependent on a few primary exports
- poor countries lack the ability to pay for food, agricultural innovation and investment in rural development
- largely isolated from connections and globalisation
- low personal incomes - mainly inhabitants living below the poverty line

Environmental
- increased vulnerability due to natural disasters
- poor farming practices lead to environmental degradation
- lack capacity to adapt to climate change - climate change induced droughts
- raw materials exploited with limited economic benefit to poor countries and little concern for the environment --> landscapes devastated due to mining, deforestation and oil pollution
- however, in general, environments are less exploited and pressured, and some are in a pristine state

Political
- limited/no access to trading arrangements/trade blocs
- resources diverted if the country has internal or external conflicts
- usually strong link between development and stability of government
- corrupt government
- non-democratic governments or democracies that function poorly

Characteristics of LDCs

'the poorest and most economically weak of the developing countries, with formidable economic, institutional and human resource problems, which are often compounded by geographical handicaps and natural and man-made disasters'

 

- At the beginning of the 21st century, the UN recognised 50 countries as LDCs, until Cape Verde was removed in 2007

- of this number, 33 are in Africa, others in SE Asia and small island states in the Pacific

 

Features of LDCs:

 - < $800 GDP per capita per year

- human resource weaknesses based on health, nutrition, education and literary indicators

- economic vulnerability due to share of manufacturing in GDP, share of labour force in manufacturing industry, annual per capita energy consumption and export concentration levels

- on-going and widespread political conflict, e.g. Dafur in Sudan

- extensive political corruption

- lack of political and social stability

- authoritarian government, e.g. a dictatorship

 

Evaluating the characteristics of LDCs:

- The 50% adult literacy target for 2015 has been met by 26/33 LDCs for women, but inly 10/33 LDCs for men

• clearly poor education in countries which haven't met the target for either
• more focus on women's education compared to men's

             --> government trying to increase women's status in the 16 LDCs where the target has been met for only women - this may lead to lower fertility rate in those countries

             --> possibly due to international pressure from other countries - much more focus on women's rights

             --> lack of skilled male workers in LDCs as literacy is a crucial skill for most jobs - so lower income leading to low GDP for the country

 

- 470 million people to live in extreme poverty by 2015

• Almost 50% of population living on < $1 a day - not enough money for a suitable quality of life
• rates of undernourishment of >40% reported in 10 LDCs = high death rates and infant mortality

             --> undernourishment means that more people will be ill and vulnerable to diseases - this means that the healthcare system will be put under pressure

             --> need more doctors per person, more equipment and better hospitals, which developing countries cannot afford

 

- Under 5 mortality is 160 deaths per 1000 live births compared to 86 for the rest of the world

• possibly higher fertility rate for women due to the high possibility that they may lose some of their children
• women unable to work and earn money for the family as they are having to look after sick children

            --> leads to a high dependency ratio if more children are being born because of the fear of death

            --> demand for better quality healthcare to treat the children - less children able to be treated due to lack of life-saving medicine and equipment

            --> higher dependency on aid efforts such as Comic Relief and Save the Children

            --> lower economically-active population in the future as children are dying

 

Quality of Life in LDCs

- the income of much of the population in an LDC is too small to meet their basic needs

- the resources in the economy are not enough to provide for the needs of the population on a sustainable basis

- their economic freedom is constricted

 

- In some cases the incidence of poverty has been falling, but a high population growth rate means that the actual number of those in poverty has increased over the long term

• total population in LDCs living on < $1 a day was 40-36% from 1990-2005
• but 212 million to 277 million in total
• %s can sometimes be misleading

- poverty is much higher in Africa (374 million have an income of < $2 per day) compared to Asia (303 million)

- in African LDCs, more people live on < $1 a day (206 million) than between $1-2 a day (169 million) - so the poor are poorer relative to the number of Asians who live on < $1 a day (71 million) and those who live on $1-2 a day (133 million)

- the % of the total population living on < $1 a day in African LDCs is considerably higher than the % of all LDCs - showing that African LDCs have a higher proportion of extremely poor people

Development Continuum vs Development Gap

Development Continuum - linear scale showing the path to development running from LDCs to MEDCs
Development Gap - the divide between the rich and the poor

- The richest 20% consume 80% of the world's resources and the poorest 20% earn only 1.3% of global income

The North-South divide and Income Distribution
- a simple model which separates the wealthy 'north' with the poorer 'south'
- the pattern is too simple as it hides areas of growing wealth, such as the Asian Tigers and China/India
- it also fails to recognise that countries have their own income gaps within them, with regional wealth inequalities
- even the poorest countries have wealthy people within them - LEDCs have the worst income distribution:

• the wealthy elite (10%) get around 40% of national income
• 10% of the people surviving on 1-2% of national income

- it is slightly more balanced in MEDCS, but still unequal
- in many countries the development gap is an urban vs rural gap, especially in LEDCs where urban areas usually have better services and more opportunities

'Bridging-the-Gap'
- Some countries are in the process of 'bridging the gap'
- For example, the Asian Tigers (Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea) have developed so much, mainly through export-led growth, that they are close behind the MEDCs, and certainly have a large amount of economic power
- Globalisation of businesses, trade and TNCs are the main ways in which this has occurred
- Economic growth is still the main way in which the development gap will be narrowed

Uneven distribution of growth
- The most powerful MEDCs, such as G8 countries, continue to grow
- NICs see the most rapid growth
- RICs (Thailand, Malaysia...) are beginning to grow more quickly
- LEDCs are hardly growing at all
- income FCCs (Former Communist Countries) may be negative

Narrowing the gap
- The UN's Millennium Development Goals set a series of targets to narrow the global development divide by 2015
- progress is being made, but in places such as Africa especially there is a huge amount of work that needs to be done, and consequently many countries have not met these goals
- trade is one of the obstacles to further progress, as some trade is unfair - largely due to taxes and tariffs on export and import items
- debt is also a huge issue - total debt as % of GDP for sub-Saharan Africa = 70%

Theories of Development

Modernisation Theory - W.W.Rostow

'all nations occupy positions on a continuum which runs from traditional societies to modern societies'

 

-Rostow proposed that there were 5 stages through which all countries have to pass through in the development process

- suggests that higher levels of consumer demand, entrepreneurship and increased technological knowledge = higher levels of economic growth

 

 

Popularity



•  popular in the 1960s - during which post-WW2 economic boom provided hope of prosperity for all countries
• followed the belief that countries were following a slow but inevitable path to western prosperity
• provides governments with a clear path to development
• idea of 'take off' suggests rapid development
• economic growth provides jobs and increases standards of living

Criticism

• Eurocentric - suggests that all countries will follow the same pattern as MEDCs in Europe and N.America
• modelled on the wealthiest countries - LEDCs will most likely develop differently
• due to the economic crises of the late 1960s and early 1970s, the model became less fashionable
• focusses only on economic development, with quality of life becoming desirable once this is established which isn't necessarily the case - especially in countries with high cultural values
• technological leapfrogging may result in countries missing out a few stages
• industrial revolutions and economic growth can cause environmental degredation
• challenged by new theories...

 

Dependency Theory - Andre Gunder Frank

 

'Links between developed and less-developed countries are the cause of worsening conditions in the developing world'

'Underdevelopment is a consequence of the way in which the world economy works'

 



- In a globalised world, countries are interconnected through trade - some are winners and some losers
- countries become wealthy by exploiting the poorest nations through unfair trade
- Latin America's underdevelopment is due to its involvement in capitalist trade
- The elite groups within the continent which have acted in the interests of capitalists in Europe and North America were rewarded with relative wealth and power - this has created a 'dual society'

Positives

• industry in the 'periphery' (developing countries) given subsidies to develop
• barriers to foreign imports encourage citizens to buy nationally-produced goods

Negatives

•  government intervention could make global trade inefficient
• spending to support industry could be spent elsewhere, e.g. education, healthcare or infrastructure
• trade barriers could increase cost of living for citizens

World Systems Theory - Immanuel Wallerstein

 

- Core countries are developed, capitalist countries that exploit peripheral (developing) countries for labour and raw materials

- Peripheral countries are dependent on the money gained by selling raw materials

- however, inevitably, the manufactured product in the core country sells for much more than the periphery, so the core can benefit and develop from the profits

 

 

Measuring Development

Development = 'the process of change operating over time'

- synonymous with economic growth - seen as the process by which countries advance and become richer

- used to be mainly based on economic growth

• easier to measure
• people have different ways of defining qualitative measures

- should take into account social, economic, environmental, political and cultural aspects of society

• cultural and political aspects of society are not easily measured --> often ignored
• dominated by social and economic values

- surveys have been created to measure development, e.g. Human Development Index - HDI

• the multiplicity of stats is helpful, although it can be biased towards the person quoting them

Problems in using the data:

• comparability of economic data, e.g. different countries use different measuring systems
• reliability - data becomes old by the time it is made public
• difficulty in measuring non-official/illegal economic activity
• variations within a country makes averages less reliable - e.g. countries with regional inequality
• assumes dominance of a market economy where goods are for sale - poverty cannot be assessed where much is provided through family labour without money, e.g. farms/allotments

- The 3 Worlds model evolved, where the 1st and 2nd Worlds were advanced or developed nations and the 3rd World countries were undeveloped or developing nations. The emphasis was on the rapid economic growth of poorer nations to enable them to catch up and narrow the 'development gap' with richer nations.

Modern definition of Development = 'the process of change which allows all the basic needs of a region to be met, achieving social justice and quality of life'

Sources

AQA Geography A2 text book, Oxford University Press, Ross, Digby, Bayliss, Collins, Chapman. 2011

AQA A2 Geography text book, Philip Alan Updates, Barker, Redfern, Skinner. 2008

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_relief#Less_Developed_Country_Debt

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavily_indebted_poor_countries

https://www.imf.org/external/np/exr/facts/hipc.htm

http://www.one.org/international/issues/debt-cancellation/