SOC101Y Introduction to Sociology Professor Robert Brym Lecture #12 Global Inequality 26 Jan 2011

Average Annual Income, by Country, 2008

Area as a Function of Percent of Country’s Population Living on Less Than US $2/day, 2003

Gross National Income Per Capita by Child Mortality Rate, 2006

Life Expectancy and Income, 200 Countries over 200 Years

Region GDP per person (US dollars) Gross Domestic Product Per Person, Sub- Saharan Africa and High-Income Countries Note: Gross Domestic Product is the dollar value of goods and services produced in a country in a year. The 1975 data are in 2005 dollars adjusted for purchasing power while the 2010 data are in 2008 dollars adjusted for purchasing power. 11.6% shrinkage 130.3% growth

GDP Growth in 2000 Dollars, Growth in 00s of % The Chinese economy was 27.2 times bigger in 2008 than in The Canadian economy was 3.4 times bigger in 2008 than in 1969.

Gini Index of Inequality Year Inequality of average income for each country Inequality of average income for each country, weighted for population size Inequality of income for each individual in the world Brazil Note: A Gini index of 0 indicates that every income recipient receives exactly the same amount of income. A Gini index of 1.0 indicates that a single income recipient receives all of the income. To put things in perspective, note that the Gini index of inequality for individuals worldwide is about.70, while the Gini index for individuals in Brazil, which has one of the highest levels of inequality of any country, is about.52. Three Concepts of World Inequality

Global Priorities (in $US billions)

Modernization Theory Global inequality results from inadequacies in poor societies themselves, including lack of:  capital  Western business techniques  stable governments  a Western mentality emphasizing savings, investment, innovation, education, high achievement, and self-control in having children

Dependency Theory I  For 250 years, the most powerful countries in the world have impoverished the least powerful countries as a matter of state policy.  Thus, the countries of the “Third World” or “Global South” accounted for 73% of world industrial production in 1750 but only 7.5% in 1913; in 1913, the world’s 12 richest country accounted for 90% of world industrial production.

Dependency Theory II  Why? The Industrial Revolution enabled Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Russia, and the United States to amass enormous wealth, which they used to establish powerful armed forces to subdue and then annex or colonize most of the rest of the world between the middle of the 18th and the middle of the 20th century.  Main exception: Japan (considered less valuable than China and India)

Dependency Theory III Neo-colonialism established by creating a system of dependency involving three main elements:  Substantial foreign investment  Support for authoritarian governments  Mounting debt

Core, Periphery and Semiperiphery (Wallerstein)  Core: major sources of capital and technology (USA, Japan, Germany)  Periphery: major sources of raw materials and cheap labour (most former colonies)  Semiperiphery: former colonies that are making considerable headway in their attempts to become prosperous (South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore; Israel; more recently, China, India, Brazil)

How Semi-Peripheral Countries Differ from Peripheral Countries  Type of colonialism  infrastructural support?  Geopolitical position  helpful to USA?  State policy  statist, pro-growth?  Social structure  land reform; homogeneous?

Canada as a Semi-Peripheral Country  Type of colonialism: White settler society in which settlers reinvested rather than sending wealth back to Europe.  Geopolitical position: Useful ally of global powers (France, Britain, USA).  State policy: Occasionally protective of Canadian industry (National Policy in the 1870s, Auto Pact in the 1960s, NEP (1980s)  Social structure: French–English conflict has drawn attention away from development policy.