Q. Why are some countries LEDCs while others are MEDCs?
The developing world tends to hold more people in absolute poverty than relative poverty. Poverty is a major problem within the developing world. The developing world holds seventy five percent of the world’s population and only twenty percent of the world’s wealth. This presents a problem and the shortage of money leads them to poverty. Where one factor leads to another and eventually the situation goes to devastating matters.
Natural disasters plunge developing world countries and LEDCs (Less Economically Developed Countries). For example the Gujarat earthquake disaster and the heavy flooding that wreaked the inhabitants of Mozambique. Other countries like Bosnia that have droughts and famines these all lead to poverty. These disasters cause poverty because these countries are often weak financially and cannot afford to bring back their country after extensive damage. It affects their inhabitants causing a lack of production leading to being unable to provide for inhabitants. This eventually leads to poverty, as they cannot even provide substances to trade and lose money.
Other factors that affect the citizens are lack of clean water and standard education. Lack of medical aid also affects the country negatively. An ill and uneducated person forms the basis of a weak nation. These factors also lead to poverty.
Also when a country is at war, services like education are disrupted. People leave home as refugees or asylum seekers. No one is there to keep up services like health services and schools, and crops are destroyed. Other important buildings are demolished including homes, buildings offices, schools and hospitals causing even more poverty. These wars also force many people to leave their homes and become refugees in other neighbouring countries. These neighbouring countries may have been developing, but sudden influx of refugees with no money or food can make the country poor once again.
Frequently, when a country in the developing world is struggling economically they ask for aid from organisations like the World Bank. They are issued loans from developed countries like the USA.
However, these banks charge high rates of interest, so that a less developed county can find it self paying more than they earn in a foreign currency. In the early seventies, for instance, Chile borrowed 3.9 billion dollars, by 1982; it paid back 12.8 billion dollars in interest and still owed money. That’s a very high rate of interest as we can see.
They are asked to pay over time; however the interest rates are so high that the country finds itself in further debt than before the loan. This problem is defined as world debt. It was suggested recently that all debt to be paid by the developing world should be written off and a fresh start made. However the problem of world debt increases every day as rates on loans increase. The only way LEDC's can afford to pay back there loan is to grow cash crops. This means crops only for sales not for them to eat. The countries are starving because land is used to grow cash crops instead of food.
The above factors pose problems for the developing world, as being already financially weak, they find it hard to overcome these problems and fall further into debt and poverty. All the factors are linked. For example, world debt will mean a lot of poor people who cannot provide an acceptable living standard for themselves. They become ill and illiterate and again the country cannot recover as it has a weak workforce. Therefore the countries are kept in poverty.
The wealth of a country is measured by its gross national product,
For example, it’s GNP per person.
World development in 1993 (Geog. Text Book)
The Causes of Poverty.
The causes of Poverty are mainly due to people having a lack of education, hardly any wealth, bad health and discrimination. However all over the world people are becoming less successful in wealth and other matters, whereas most people are becoming poorer and the gap between rich and poor is increasing immensely.
The many causes of poverty include being uneducated. This plays a key role for poverty, because if you are not educated then how are you going to find a job? It is very hard to achieve a good job without being educated. Education is an important part of a developed country. It is influenced by wealth as without wealth the schools cannot be built and the teachers cannot be paid. Also in countries where there are mostly primary industry workers the children may be needed to work instead of going to school and cheap labour is also involved. Without education the population cannot go on to get secondary or better qualified jobs that will make the country gain in development. Because of a lack of schools in third world countries, not many people are able to work in medicine and other top class jobs; therefore health care is rare in third world countries and HIV/AIDS are common in third world countries Without education the population cannot go on to get secondary or better qualified jobs that will make the country gain in development.
So you have no choice but to find any sort of job. Which means the pay will be very low and you will have to work very hard in order to receive money and pay for the needs of the family. This can actually end up in a state of absolute poverty, if you are the only person in the family working and the rest of the family rely on you to work and pay for the families needs then things can get very complicated.
There are other ways that poverty can happen and another major one is health and old age. If your health is very weak and you are forced to work to pay for food. Then your health can deteriorate immensely. You may have seen people in Afghanistan that are in there 70’s and 80’s with sacks of beans and other sources of food on there back. They carry 10 kilo bags of beans and rice to where they are told. All this hard work just to buy some food so they can eat. Sometimes we hear about people saying that world hunger is coming to an end, but its not going to stop by just dropping a few sacks of rice here and there is it? We have to help LEDCs to gain money and start of developing quickly before it gets too late.
In addition to this we can see that discrimination is also a very big aspect for poverty, as it affects it many ways. One factor is that people that are richer than other people feel they can treat them unequally. But in the world every single person shall be treated equally. As it is stated in the Quran, “Each of mankind shall be treated equally”. Rich people feel that they cannot be in contact with poor people and this is the main reason why the world today is beginning to have a great downfall as the gap between the poor and rich expands.
We can see from the following facts how poverty is affected.
FACTS ON POVERTY
- Half the world (nearly three billion people) live on less than two dollars a day.
- The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the poorest 48 nations is less than the wealth of the world's three richest people combined.
- Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names.
- Less than one per cent of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000 and yet it didn't happen.
The Effects of Poverty.
The effects of poverty usually result in the following to occur:
- Crime
- Illness
- Death/bad health
- Alcoholism
- Poverty leads to poverty in children too.
Poverty results in crime. We as humans can become provoked by looking at others committing crimes. Then they themselves will start to commit crime. This can also lead to family disruption and cause further troubles.
Poverty can also cause diseases and make the person mentally ill or get them run down very badly. This could result in the person committing suicide or even euthanasia in some countries as it is legal.
Alcoholism can also take affect on the person due to the stress of poverty the person can feel that he/she can also have a good time like the more richer people.
It can also lead to poverty for the offspring as they will grow up to be n a state of poverty as well as their parents.
‘High Population can lead to unemployment.’
HOW CAN WE DEAL WITH THIS?
As we can see in countries like Canada where the population is very large and yet people come from around the world just to live in Canada because of the quality of life and better standards of earning a living. As the years go by unemployment gets higher and higher due to an overcrowded country.
As we can see from the following graph Canada has the one of the highest unemployment’s compared with the rest of North and South America. Another source is the table below, which shows the rates of unemployment.
Q. What are the basic needs for the poor?
The basic needs for the poor are having clean water facilities and foods the family can survive. Better standards of education could help as young children could get the chance to earn a good living somewhere else in the world, this would also help in preventing poverty. Personal hygiene and health doctors would be needed in countries to help people in need of health support. Also a good source of shelter would be needed in order for the people to sleep under, i.e. homes or huts. Finally a small job for the poor as hey will need some money to help raise the family. All these factors keep poverty to a minimum.
Q. What can be done to help these poor countries?
We can help these poor countries by informing other more developed countries to donate some of there facilities towards the less developed countries. For example USA and Germany volunteer to help the countries like Sudan and Mozambique by overcoming there disasters. They could also help by setting up a family plan or even lowering there world debt loans. Also poor people could start of their own trade businesses in which they could start to earn for a living. If we minimize the loans countries have to pay, we can reduce poverty and help to regain the countries quicker and more efficiently, this helps to reduce poverty and this could be the answer to eradicate poverty.
Another way we can help these countries is by giving them aids. There are three main forms of aid:
- Bilateral Aid
- Multilateral Aid
- NGO’s
Bilateral aid- This type of aid is between two countries, one rich and the other a LEDC. Money is given by a rich donor country to a poorer country. In reality this aid is not given but is often tied.
This means that the donor imposes conditions upon the recipient country.
Multilateral aid-This is when the richer countries give money to international organisations such as the World Bank these organisations then redistribute the money to the poorer countries. It’s like a charity.
NGO’s:- Meaning Non-Governmental organisations is a charity that is nothing to do with the government. It is registered though on the, ‘Global NGO register’. An example of an NGO is,
“Human Appeal International”
CONCLUSION.
So it seems to me that World Poverty has been looked at it certain ways however it remains to a very complex issue. However poverty is affected by many aspects. Mainly of which is war and world debt. These two are really unnecessary factors that should not be tolerated anymore. If these were not the case then World Poverty would definitely decrease. Therefore the world shall be free from poverty if we take action and that is to do something about wars and world debt which is not a good way to represent the country as the gap between rich and poor increases. A recent headline also states, “Growing "Gap" between Rich & Poor USA and worldwide.”
