1. UNIT 3.1 DEVELOPMENT
INEQUALITIES

2. SYLLABUS CONTENT Identify and explain inequalities between countries.
Identify and explain inequalities within countries.

3. Development Gap
When using indices to measure development, it becomes the following becomes apparent:
Development varies from place to place and
Development changes over time.
Studying these changes and variations allows for a better understanding of how quickly development is actually taking place, why is it occurring and why inequalities exist i.e. why some areas are considered to be well-developed and other areas are not.

5. Development Gap
Studies of these inequalities have shown that a development gap exists.
This means that there is a widening difference in levels of development between the world’s richest and poorest countries.
This development gap can also occur within countries, for example between regions or between urban and rural areas.
Understanding the reasons for this gap in development between countries is key to eliminating much of the poverty and suffering that exists in the world today.
Understanding the development gap requires that countries and regions be placed into groups.

6. CLASSIFYING DEVELOPMENT
Global Social and Economic Groupings

7. Classifying Development
For a long time Geographers have been trying to classify or place countries around the globe with similar characteristics into groups.  This allows for easier study and has been particularly relevant to development.
Over the years there have been a number of descriptions and explanations of levels of development between countries and how countries have moved from one level of development to another.

8. First, Second, and Third Worlds
One of the earliest classifications was a 3 fold division used by the United Nations for the first time in 1945. 
1.      The First World were the ‘developed’ countries or industrial democracies and included mainly capitalist free-market countries found in Western Europe and their old colonies such as the USA and Australia.
2.      The Second World comprised industrial but not democratic, centrally planned, socialist or communist bloc countries – the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellite states like Poland and Czechoslovakia  These countries had different structure to those of the first world, had much more government control of business and public services. The second and first worlds were at odds for decades during the Cold War.
3.      The Third World comprised countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America which did not fit into the two groups above. 

9. The "three worlds" of the Cold War era, as of the period between April 1975 (the fall of Saigon) and August 1975 (the communist takeover in Laos).
  First World: United States, United Kingdom and their allies.
  Second World: Soviet Union, China, and their allies.
  Third World: Neutral and non-aligned countries.

10. Strengths and weaknesses of the Cold War Classification
It allowed people to understand the basic political structure of the countries involved.
Strengths
Weaknesses
Being based on political ideology and capitalist development (purely economic in nature) this division had a bias towards the democratic First World and a western model of development.
Did not account for cultural development.
The Third World (over 100 countries comprising 75% of the world) was clumped together in one group despite the HUGE differences between them. For example, Argentina and Haiti were both placed in this group.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, in 1991, the term Second World couldn't really be used anymore and so the definitions of the First and Third World changed ever so slightly. This change was also accompanied by the realisation that this classification system was too simplistic to offer a real idea of the level of development present in a country.
After the break-up of the USSR, some Second World countries joined the First World and some joined the Third World.
Thus, the First World became the “North” and the Third World became the “South”.

11. The North-South Divide
The North-South Divide is a division that exists between the wealthy developed countries, known collectively as "the North", and the poorer developing countries (least developed countries), or "the South."
The divide was part of a report by Willy Brandt on the state of world development in 1971 and classified countries broadly as economically wealthy manufacturing countries (the North) or poor and agricultural (the South).
The Brandt report wanted to address the issue of massive global inequality between the economic core countries with high standards of living as found in Western Europe, North America and their old colonies and the periphery countries with lower levels of development.
It used GNP per capita to classify countries.
The North home to four of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council
2.      Has all members of the G8, the group of the 8 most powerful nations/economies on Planet Earth
3.      Has enough food and water for 95% of its population
4.      Have 95% of people with access to a functioning education system. 
5.      Controls four fifths of the world income. 
6.      Owns 90% of the manufacturing industries 

12. The Brandt Line
As a result of the Brandt report in 1980, an imaginary line was drawn on world maps.
This line, called the Brandt Line divides countries into:
Developed Countries in the temperate North and
Developing / Underdeveloped Countries in the tropical South.

13. Problems with this classification
It was still too simple – large variations in wealth are hidden in both the rich North and poor South
It is geographically incorrect – Australia and New Zealand, are geographically south but included in the North, whilst more poor countries that make up the South are above the Equator than below it!
Economies have become more varied that manufacturing and agriculture.
Countries like Argentina and South Africa (in the South) do not fit into its parameters.
Development changes over time –the BRIC economies of Brazil, India and China (but not Russia as it was already north of the line) have grown massively since the map was made. The Asian Tigers have also bucked this trend and have developed rapidly.
 The crash of the Soviet Bloc has massively changed the picture, with many of the USSR’s former satellite states now falling into the developing (South) category.
It is an economic model and did not allow for changes in a nation’s status.

14. Variations within the North – South Divide

15. The Brandt Line. This shows the development gap
The Brandt Line. This shows the development gap. The gap in wealth between the worlds richest and poorest countries. However, is this still relevant? Are there exceptions? e.g. South Korea is in the South, however has a higher GDP than many Eastern European countries in the North. Chile and Argentina both have a higher life expectancies than Russia.

16. Countries at different stages of development
After the Cold War ended, the terms Less Developed Country (LDC) and More Developed Country (MDC) were used.
LDCs were also called ‘developing / underdeveloped countries’ and MDCs were ‘developed countries’.
Countries in the South were LDCs and those in the North were MDCs.
This was not fully accepted because it was felt that development is not only economic – poor countries have a rich culture and society.
This eventually became LEDC and MEDC where the focus was mainly on economic development.
However, problems arose because some LEDC countries started to develop faster than others – leading to the need for more groups.

17. Some countries are developing faster than others
Some countries are developing faster than others. Many Asian countries are developing quickly while many African countries are developing slowly or not at all.

18. Countries at different stages of development
This is a more recent classification that groups countries into:
MEDC – More Economically Developed Country:   
These are richer countries that have lots of industry and service jobs such as the UK, USA, France and Japan.
LEDC -Less Economically Developed Country:  
These are poorer countries that have mainly primary jobs such as farming and mining, e.g. Bangladesh and Mali.
NIC – Newly Industrialised Country:
(Taiwan, Singapore, India).  These countries are those that have developed fastest over the latter part of the 20th Century, profiting from globalisation and technology transfer.
They probably started their development in the 1960s.  
One group of these NICs were known as the “Asian Tigers”

19. Countries at different stages of development
RICs – Recently Industrialising Country:
These are the countries that have developed more recently particularly in their manufacturing industries, from the 1980’s onwards e.g. Thailand and Chile
LDCs – Least Developed Countries, as identified by the United Nations.

20. Newly Industrialised Countries
Newly industrialised countries (NICs) are nations that have undergone rapid and successful industrialisation since the 1960s and as a result have moved up the development ladder, having previously been considered developing countries.
The first countries to become NICs(in the 1960s) were Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong. The media referred to them as the ‘Asian tigers’. A ‘tiger economy’ is one that grows very rapidly.
The reasons for the success of these countries were:
• a good initial level of infrastructure
• a skilled but relatively low-cost workforce
• cultural traditions that revere education and achievement
• governments that welcomed foreign direct investment (FDI) from transnational corporations
• all countries had distinct advantages in terms of geographical location
• the ready availability of bank loans, often extended at government behest and at attractive interest rates.
The success of these four countries provided a model for others to follow, such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, then Brazil, China and India. Other countries like Vietnam appear to be following this model.
Japan, South Korea and Singapore have developed so much that many people now consider them to be developed countries.

21. The five-fold division based on wealth
First World: Rich industrialising countries with the highest levels of social and economic development e.g. UK, USA, Japan, Australia, etc. Members of the OECD.
Second World: Countries include those former centrally planned economies (previous communist systems) like Russia and those that are still communist such as China and Cuba.
Third World: Many groups are included here including:
Newly Industrialising Countries: those in transition to economic and social development e.g. Brazil, India and Mexico . Also called emerging economies.
Oil Exporting Countries: e.g. UAE. (These have a formal organisation called OPEC.
Some writers still call these ‘developing’.

22. The five-fold division based on wealth
Fourth World: – Countries that are in early stages of transition towards development e.g. Nigeria, Ecuador, Kenya. They are also called transitional economies.
Fifth World: countries that show little evidence of starting a transition towards development e.g. Bangladesh, Chad, Somalia, Haiti, Democratic Republic of Congo. Also referred to as Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) or Least Developed Countries (LDCs).

23. The five-fold division based on wealth
This is a more recent method designed to try and classify countries and their level of development.
It makes a better distinction between countries of lower levels of development and accounts for different reasons for wealth.  
It also takes into account the variable success of the formally centrally planned economies such as Russia.

25. Development Continuum
Many people viewed development as a two step process with countries moving from being classified as developing to developed. However, this is a very simplistic approach and not very accurate.
The contemporary way of viewing development is as a continual process which may occur in a number of different ways, not necessarily in the way the Western World did (as outlined by the Rostow Model of Development.)
Ranking countries using HDI, essentially shows a development continuum i.e. a sliding scale from most to least developed with lots of intermediates such as RICs and NICs. It thus illustrates the complexities that the Brandt Line and other classifications fail to display.
Therefore, it also indicates the importance of the changing roles of countries such as the Asian Tigers (originally LDCs who attracted TNCs and consequential cumulative causation accelerated development. Now they are mature NICs and their role in the global economy has changed and will change again as they continue to develop and the global shift moves. Some, like South Korea and Singapore are clearly developed countries.
This idea has replaced older classifications (like first, second, third world and MEDC/LEDC) as the use of LEDC and MEDC as discrete groups implied that all countries within that group are of the same development level, which is not the case.
The development continuum is more reflective of reality. 

26. Rostow’s Model of Development

27. A Development Continuum
The concept of least developed countries (LDCs) was first identified in 1968 by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
These are the poorest of the developing countries. They have major economic, institutional and human resource problems, often exacerbated by geographical problems such as very low rainfall and natural and man-made disasters.
At present 49 countries are identified as LDCs. Of these 34 are in Africa, 14 in Asia and the Pacific, and one in Latin America (Haiti).
When countries develop beyond a certain point they are no longer considered to be LDCs.