In some LEDCs, manufacturing industry has not progressed beyond the stages of domestic crafts and basic processing of raw materials. Having high percentages of their workforces employed in farming can identify these countries. They include many countries in sub-Saharan Africa where the preconditions needed for industrial growth don’t exist. Such preconditions can be summarized into the following physical factors: a difficult climate (hot and dry), a lack of natural resources (including iron, coal and oil), and few agricultural surpluses. The following human factors are also influences: Debt, Education, Infrastructure, Demographics, Political Organisation, and Political Will. Other countries with small population totals, say less than five million, have home markets that are too small to support profitable manufacturing.
B) With reference to one or more MEDCs, explain why MEDCs often contain examples of regions suffering de-industrialisation at the same time as other regions are experiencing manufacturing growth.
There was a significant decline in the relative importance of the manufacturing industry in the last 30 years of the twentieth century in MEDCs both in terms of employment and it’s contribution to the national economy. What has happened in the UK has been repeated in places such as North America and the EU as well. Over previous years, there has been a persistent fall in numbers in the manufacturing industry, the main indicator of the process of de-industrialisation in the UK.
Two main factors caused the general decline of manufacturing industry in the UK.
One of these reasons was increased mechanization. Automation, robots, and computers have reduced the numbers of workers needed along a production line. Manufacturing has become less labour intensive. The tasks done by unskilled labour were the easiest, and therefore the first, to be replaced by machines.
Another reason was loss of competitiveness. An example of this is overseas competition, particularly from the newly industrializing countries in eastern Asia, where costs of production were lower. Many UK companies had become high-cost producers due to historical locations, outdated factory buildings, old machinery, inflexible working practices and high wages.
Although it is possible to view de-industrialisation as part of a natural progression towards a post-industrial society as MEDCs move away from an economy based on manufacturing to one based upon services, it is a selective process. What this means is that it targets certain industries and certain industrial areas while leaving others untouched. Indeed during the main period of de-industrialisation since 1979 the output from the manufacturing industry in the UK has actually increased. This is due to the expansion of factories manufacturing electrical and optical equipment, including computers. These factories have different needs and therefore occupy different locations to those of the more traditional textile and engineering factories.
At the beginning of the new millennium there are still news headlines about jobs being lost, plants being shut, British goods being priced out of world markets by the high value of sterling and people migrating from north to south. They are all symptoms of continuing de-industrialisation, the effects on which are most keenly felt in the North and Midlands. Despite many years of financial assistance from British governments, as well as help from the EU’s regional fund, and despite a multitude of different labels used for areas eligible for aid, (which include Development Areas, Enterprise zones, and Assisted Areas), the North-South divide stubbornly refuses to go away. If anything, the dividing line has crept further south to include the West Midlands as an honorary member of the North. In April 1999, the government set up eight Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) for England.
Out-migration from north to south remains strong. Between 1991 and 1998 the population of England and Wales increased by 2.6 per cent, but the increase in North West England was negligible (0.1 per cent) and actually fell in the North of England by 0.5 per cent.
What this means is that since 1991, almost a quarter of a million people have left old industrial communities in the North and Midlands, such as Tyneside, Merseyside and the Black Country. Jobs are still disappearing and unemployment rates are high. This has led to houses being boarded up and abandoned in northern cities and mining settlements. In contrast, councils in the South East are furiously searching for space to build the extra one million homes that the government forecasts are going to be needed there in the next few years. Companies in the South are suffering from acute labour shortages, as potential workers can’t afford the booming house prices.
This emphasizes the fact that the South in general is becoming a much more popular place to live than the North, and is experiencing industrialisation, where as the North is experiencing de industrialisation.