LESS DEVELOPED COUNTRIES

LESS-DEVELOPED COUNTRIES

LESS-DEVELOPED COUNTRIES

The different nations can be divided up into three parts:

developed or industrialized,

developing countries

and less-developed countries.

I want to turn your attention to the less-developed countries, whose living-standard is very small.

Characteristics:

Demographic and social features:

rapidly increasing population

insufficient medical care

high child mortality

low life expectancy

insufficient educational facilities

high illiteracy

malnourishment and starvation

low income per head

big gap between rich and poor

migration from impoverished rural areas to town slums

Economic features:

economic structure based on agriculture (a large but neglected
sector)

mainly primitive subsistence farming

low productivity

limited technology, infrastructure and social and political institutions

economy can't keep pace with the increase of population

heavy reliance on export earnings from the sale of primary products

import of mainly manufactured/finished goods

low labour standards, low wages, child labour

accelerating environmental pollution

heavy debts

One of the reasons for these differences between the rich and the poor countries is that the LCDs had mostly formerly been colonies and after independence they have continued to depend on one or two commodities. But these crops are for export, they don't provide food for the local population. Furthermore governments spend less on health and education because financial institutions decided to make further loans conditional on cuts in government spending. There also has been a decline in the prices of the world markets but the prices on products, which LDCs are providing, have collapsed.

Fertility Rate:

source: https://www.rifpd.org/Overview/Predicaments/Population/population.html
(rifpd = Rotarian Fellowship for Population and Development)

This map shows that the fertility rate particularly in the LCDs is very high, like in Mali, Senegal and Ethiopia or Tanzania, for example.

Concerning the population growth I found the following information from a recent United Nations' report:

Reasons for this expected enormous growth in the LCDs are that the LCDs don't have enough experiences in contraception and furthermore mostly the children are the "capital" of the adults. They have to take care of their parents when they are old and they also have to go to work to provide the family with food.

Concluded I want to show you the following bar chart:

There is a substantial difference in child mortality rates even within the same income groups. Children living in Sub-Saharan Africa are at the greatest risk of dying before they reach the age of 5. In South Asia, girls have a much greater risk of dying than their brothers do. (source: World Bank Group)

The reasons for the low life expectancy in the LCDs are shown by the next pie chart:

Death to Children under Age 5 by Main Cause, Less Developed Countries, 1995

Source: UNICEF, The State of the World's Children, 1998.