The Economics of Underdeveloped Countries [antikvár]

1 Poverty and income distribution The world we live in presents a picture of appalling contrasts. While a few countries are immensely prosperous, nearly two-thirds of the population of the world subsists on sub-standard incomes. Illiteracy, bad housing, lack of medical care and malnutrition are prevalent throughout most of Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. These facts can no longer be ignored. Indeed they have come to dominate intellectual thought and political action to an unprecedented degree in our time. The poor nations are variously described as 'backward', 'underdeveloped' and 'developing'. The choice of word depends largely on the sensitivity of the audience and the sensibility of the analyst. Ironically, it is the most emotive word, 'backward', that gets closest to the essence of their problems. Underdeveloped in what sense? These countries have fallen behind in the race for higher incomes. They also happen to be underdeveloped in relation to their potential income levels. But while it is significant to argue that some countries are poorer than others, it is trivial to claim that each country could become richer than it is now. It is worth setting out the reasons why. 1 Even if expansion depended on the availability of natural resources, perhaps no nation is so destitute of them as to have no potential for expanding its level of income. It is possible, of course, to imagine areas with dim economic prospects. Kuwait without oil would perhaps have had to reconcile itself to permanently low subsistence, relieved only by migration to better-endowed, adjacent areas. Few nations, however, fall into this pattern. Historically, nations seem to have a tendency to become economically viable and remain so. While regions within nations may be beyond the range of worthwhile exploitation, this is rarely true of nations as a whole. 2 In any event, countries are not totally dependent on their natural resources. The rise of Britain as an industrial power in the