Development gap

DEFINITION: Inequalities of wealth, health, and educational opportunities between rich, developed countries and poor, developing countries

The development gap highlights the interdependence of developed and developing countries. When billions of people in poor nations suffer from socioeconomic deprivation and environmental degradation, developed countries are affected by massive crossborder migration, political instability, and terrorism. The existence of the development gap makes clear the need for global cooperation and swift action to address issues that affect the environment, such as poverty and climate change.

The United Nations uses the Human Development Index (HDI) to measure the progress of the development of each country annually in terms of gross domestic product, educational attainment, health outcomes, and gender equality. The findings of this measurement in 2023-2024 indicated that the global HDI value fell for the first time ever in both 2020 and 2021, largely because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Developed countries have since rebounded. However, 51 percent of the least developed countries did not recover as of 2024. According to the World Bank Group, in 2022 about seven hundred million people lived in extreme poverty. They resided mainly in Sub-Saharan Africa, conflict-afflicted areas, and rural areas. Because of the setbacks caused by the pandemic, the Sustainable Development Goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030 was unlikely. UNESCO reported in 2024 that about 263 million of the world's children were out of school. This included 61 million children ages 5 to 11; 60 million children ages 11 to 14; and 142 million children ages 15 to 19. Many of these children did not have access to a school in their region, but others either did not enroll or enrolled later than they should have.

Poverty in developing countries is often perceived to be the result of an inadequacy of resources, but in reality the opposite is the case: Many poor countries actually possess abundant natural resources, such as dense forest in Congo, rich oil reserves in Nigeria, and gold mines in Ghana. The concept of “resource curse” has been used to explain the ironic outcomes of abundant resources leading to poverty. Scholars suggest that the abundant reserves of minerals in poor regions of the South resulted in colonialism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in which rich nations of the North took advantage of the Indigenous populations of those areas. These and other abundant resources also led to armed conflicts and corruption within developing countries in the post-independence era. Other factors, such as high population growth rates, weak governments, and poor infrastructure, also explain the fragile state of many poor nations.

High levels of poverty significantly impact the environment. Poor countries are prone to crop failure and famine because of deforestation, land degradation, desertification, and loss of biodiversity. They are less prepared than richer nations to handle the aftermath of natural disasters and are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

The lack of development in poor countries has reciprocally affected rich countries. Wars and other conflicts lead to regional instability, which often triggers massive cross-border migration; an example is the flight of Haitian refugees to the United States during the 1980s and the 6.5 million Ukrainian refugees to Poland, Hungary, and Moldova. Rapid environmental degradation in developing countries has also been linked to the acceleration of global warming.

Bridging the Gap

A wide gap between developed and developing countries is not inevitable, however. The so-called economic miracle that took place in the Far East during the 1980s and the emergence of the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) during the 1990s have shown that high economic growth in a nation helps to alleviate poverty among that nation’s citizens. Between 1981 and 2004, for example, some 500 million people in China climbed out of poverty thanks to an influx of direct foreign investment, massive job opportunities, and consequently huge foreign reserves.

Since the end of the twentieth century, developed countries have increased their role in addressing global poverty. The abolition of external debt by some of the developed countries has helped to lessen the financial burdens of developing countries. Developed nations have also increased the amount of foreign aid they provide to assist poor countries in buying food and medicines and in building basic infrastructure. For example, the member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) alone paid out $204 billion in foreign aid in 2022. Efforts to reach the goal of have included the investment of increased resources in conservation, reforestation, projects to ensure clean water supplies, and improved sanitation. Technology transfers from developed nations have helped developing countries to adapt to environmental changes associated with climate change. Drought-resistant crops, for example, have been introduced in poor nations to help farmers cope with increasingly long dry seasons.

Obstacles and Controversies

The narrow focus on the gap between developed and developing countries—the so-called North-South divide—has been criticized as playing down the socioeconomic disparities found even within developed countries. In the United Kingdom, for example, 4.3 million children were living in poverty during 2022/2023. The number of children living in poverty in the United States was much higher, 11 million in 2023. Other forms of disparities, such as urban-rural differences and gender gaps, both in developed and developing countries, also deserve of attention.

The politics of development is complicated. Many scholars and nongovernmental organizations argue that the of the development gap is related to the unequal global structures of agricultural and trading policies. Heavy farming subsidies in the United States and France have placed poor farmers at a disadvantage. Fluctuating commodity price levels also interfere with farmers’ ability to make long-term investments and plans. Scholars have pointed out that the unsuccessful outcomes of the United Nations Climate Change Conferences, demonstrate a strong sense of skepticism on the part of both developed countries (led by the United States) and developing countries (led by China) regarding the “right” path to a low-carbon economy.

Bibliography

Collier, Paul. The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Sen, Amartya. Development as Freedom. 1999. Reprint. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Herre, Bastian and Pablo Arriagada. "The Human Development Index and Related Indices: What They Are and What We Can Learning from Them." Our World in Data, 1 Nov. 2023, ourworldindata.org/human-development-index. Accessed 16 July 2024.

Whalley, John, and Sean Walsh. Bridging the North-South Divide on Climate Post-Copenhagen. Waterloo, Ont.: Centre for International Governance Innovation, 2009.

"Widening Digital Gap Between Developed, Developing States Threatening to Exclude World's Poorest Countries from Next Industrial Revolution, Speakers Tell Second Commission." United Nations, 6 Oct. 2023, press.un.org/en/2023/gaef3587.doc.htm. Accessed 2024.

"Poverty." World Bank Group, 2024, www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty. Accessed 16 July 2024.