Religion, Wealth and Poverty

The Need for World Development

The world is mainly divided into two categories - the 'north' and the 'south'.   From about 1950 to 1985, it was customary to talk of poor countries as 'Third World' countries.  This was because some people divided the world in three.

  • First World - the West for example USA, Western Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan.
  • Second World - the countries poorer than the first world but richer than the third world.
  • Third World - all the other countries, which were regarded as the poorest countries in the world.

However most books do not refer to first, second, third world countries any more they use more developed, developing and less developed countries.

South America countries have achieved higher levels of development than most of the other less economically developed countries (LEDC's), but is dwarfed by the size and wealth of the USA.  This is shown below is a table of average income per head by continent.            

Join now!

This clearly shows that the world's income in distributed unfairly.  The main question is that how can there be an end to mass hunger and malnutrition whilst that world's income is disburse unequally?  These variations in wealth affect the quality of life, health, literacy and housing.

If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same the village would consist of:

6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth and all 6 would be from the USA.

80 would live in substandard housing.

...

This is a preview of the whole essay