essay on characteristics of developing countries pdf

Common Characteristics of Developing Countries Essay

Population and environment, ​the international debt crisis, foreign aid, works cited.

Developing countries share certain unique common characteristics. It is evident that most of these nations still grapple with issues concerning health, social amenities, and education. Challenges associated with public health include some of the common characteristics that may be noted within developing states (Todaro & Stephen 12). Their health systems are underdeveloped and a remarkable percentage of the population cannot access adequate health care.

This challenge may be due to a lack of resources to establish and decentralize sufficient and well-equipped health care service delivery facilities to the population. The local populations are highly affected. Other public health challenges compound to cause high mortality and morbidity rates within such nations.

Lack of proper education and human resources include other similar problems faced by the developing nations. Due to low-income levels, most populations within the developing nations cannot access quality education. Moreover, the systems of formal learning within such countries are ineffective (Todaro & Stephen 19). These education systems are not designed in a transformative manner. Consequently, there is a generation of an impaired workforce in the employment industry.

This challenge has contributed to poor performance within key industrial firms and business organizations. Frequent tensions are arising from civil wars within these developing states. Particularly, this is common within African nations.

The chief causes of such conflicts may include conflicts on natural resources, political instabilities, and tribal hatred. The developing nations encounter the severe impacts of disasters. These include both natural and technological disasters. This occurs mainly because they lack proper and comprehensive mechanisms for disaster prevention, management, and mitigation. Issues of food insecurity and safety usually confront these nations.

This is caused by a lack of initiative to employ effective agricultural systems with adequate technology to enhance food production. Lastly, there are prevalent challenges associated with housing and shelter (Todaro & Stephen 31). Most citizens of these countries lack access to improved and standardized housing facilities. Indeed, this is evident from the high number of slums and informal settlements within these nations. Developing nations indeed share many challenges.

The environment forms the fundamental orientation of both human, animal, and plant life. The study of eco-biology indicates the basic interactions between different components of the environment. All humans depend on the resources found within the environment. Analytically, this observation potentiates a critical fact. There is a population a given environment can sustain. Of course, this occurs only within a specified period (Todaro & Stephen 37).

Human beings normally fight for the resources available within the general environment. Therefore, whenever scarcity of these environmental resources arises, there is a likelihood that conflicts might also emerge. Increased population strains the available resources to a negligible level.

Ideally, the environment forms the basic platform for human life. All other supportive services and resources of importance to human nature emerge from the environment. It is correct to insinuate that the population and environment share a mutual relationship. Notably, this means that the environment can dictate the population it can sustain (Todaro & Stephen 40). The environment directly manipulates population growth.

This is because the environment is the main source of food and other crucial resources. These are vital for human beings to form associations and procreate. Perhaps, this explains the lack of human habitation within desert regions. The effects of population growth on the environment are unavoidable.

The Malthusian theory explains this relationship in a very empirical manner (Todaro & Stephen 45). Human beings strain the environment through various anthropogenic activities. These lead to environmental degradation and pollution. Observably, highly populated regions are characterized by a high level of environmental pollution and degradation. The environment that supports a high population growth rate has enough resources. These resources are appropriate for effective and uniform human growth and development. Generally, there is a direct association in association between population growth and the environment. However, it is significant to examine other interactions and interrelations that affect this association.

Trade is an important component of economic development. In the recent past, countries have adopted transformative measures. These measures are geared towards enhancing the level of their domestic and international participation in trade. Scholars and personalities have supposed different theoretical models regarding local, regional, and global trade. Ha-Joon Chan is one of such personalities that have contributed immensely to the understanding and analysis of trade (Todaro & Stephen 54).

His reiterations concerning the movement towards free trade remain strategic and sound. According to Ha-Joon Chan, the movement towards free trade will make the rich nations to “kick away the ladder.” The ladder herein refers to the means through which these rich nations gained their success. This statement implies that most rich nations succeeded due to restrictions on international trade.

Most protocols on global and regional trade have been punitive to certain nations. However, some of the rich nations have gained remarkably from such protocols and regulations. This explains why Ha-Joon Chang observes the significance of free trade in alleviating these partial regulations. Free trade will enable developing nations to interact and engage in liberalized international trade. The environment will have minimal restrictions based on international boundaries, currencies, and the quality of goods among other things (Todaro & Stephen 59).

This state of activities is crucial for most emergent economies that have encountered severe discrimination within the international trading platform. Ha-Joon Chang notes that most rich nations will lose the channels and loopholes of wealth creation through unnecessary restrictions. Generally, this is a form of a liberalized situation. The statement focuses on third world states and their mode of acquiring wealth.

The international debt crisis has a long and interesting history. Most countries decided to devise their economic policies and principles following their early independence. In Africa, some of the post-independent economic policies were based on the systems of particular colonizers. The cold war marked the beginning of the international debt crisis (Todaro & Stephen 78). The period was marred with a lot of borrowing from wealthy foreign governments and banks.

Observably, these loans were provided at attractive and discounted rates of interest. These transactions were done minus the interests of the welfare of average citizens within the borrowing nations. This situation was propagated by the fear of the US that some countries could be transformed into a communist. These fears made poor nations to take huge loans at uneconomical logic and rates.

The “oil crisis” marked the second stride in the development of the debt crisis. This involved the extreme hiking of prices by the oil-rich nations. After gaining huge money from hiked oil prices, these nations deposited their money within western financial institutions. The changes in the value of the US dollar catapulted the process. At the end of the 1970s, there was a major financial shift. High-interest rates in the world markets struck the poor nations heavily (Todaro & Stephen 87).

Oil prices doubled and basic commodities became very expensive. During the era of President Reagan, these poor nations paid heavily on their debts and loosed the value of their exports. The debt crisis later emerged in the 1980s. The entire rot was unearthed when Mexico threatened to default her repayments in 1982. The consequent steps are taken only safeguarded the creditors. Nonetheless, these initiatives failed to address the debt crisis.

There are several debates concerning foreign aid and its capacity to initiate growth and development. There is a generalized belief that foreign aid can buy growth. However, this is only possible under certain prescribed conditions. For instance, foreign aid must be channeled to areas in which it can perform the highest good. Foreign aid only buys growth within nations that have adopted the sound and proper policies.

These frameworks must relate to financial, trade, and fiscal issues. From here, is imperative to evaluate the characteristics of a “good policy” (Todaro & Stephen 92). According to some economists, the objective of the aid must be stated modestly. In essence, a particular aid ought to offer some benefits to the poor. Perhaps, this is when it might qualify to buy growth. Generally, there are severe debates on this issue and most assumptions remain contestable.

Todaro, Michael P, & Stephen C. Smith. Economic Development . Boston: Pearson Addison Wesley, 2009. Print.

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Bibliography

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Common Characteristics of Developing Countries | Economics

Following are some of the basic and important characteristics which are common to all developing economies:

An idea of the characteristics of a developing economy must have been gathered from the above analysis of the definitions of an underdeveloped economy. Various developing countries differ a good deal from each other. Some countries such as countries of Africa do not face problem of rapid population growth, others have to cope with the consequences of rapid population growth. Some developing countries are largely dependent on exports of primary products, others do not show such dependence, and others do not show such dependence.

Some developing countries have weak institutional structure such as lack of property rights, absence of the rule of law and political instability which affect incentives to invest. Besides, there are lot of differences with regard to levels of education, health, food production and availability of natural resources. However, despite this great diversity there are many common features of the developing economies. It is because of common characteristics that their developmental problems are studied within a common analytical framework of development economics.

Characteristic # 1. Low Per Capita Income :

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The first important feature of the developing countries is their low per capita income. According to the World Bank estimates for the year 1995, average per capita income of the low income countries is $ 430 as compared to $ 24,930 of the high-income countries including U.S.A., U.K., France and Japan. According to these estimates for the year 1995, per capita income was $340 in India, $ 620 in China, $240 in Bangladesh, $ 700 in Sri Lanka. As against these, for the year 1995 per capita income was $ 26,980 in USA, $ 23,750 in Sweden, $ 39,640 in Japan and 40,630 in Switzerland.

It may however be noted that the extent of poverty prevailing in the developing countries is not fully reflected in the per capita income which is only an average income and also includes the incomes of the rich also. Large inequalities in income distribution prevailing in these economies have made the lives of the people more miserable. A large bulk of population of these countries lives below the poverty line.

For example, the recent estimates reveal that about 28 per cent of India’s population (i.e. about 260 million people) lives below the poverty line, that is, they are unable to get even sufficient calories of food needed for minimum subsistence, not to speak of minimum clothing and housing facilities. The situation in other developing countries is no better.

The low levels of per capita income and poverty in developing countries is due to low levels of productivity in various fields of production. The low levels of productivity in the developing economies has been caused by dominance of low-productivity agriculture and informal sectors in their economies, low levels of capital formation – both physical and human (education, health), lack of technological progress, rapid population growth which are in fact the very characteristics of the underdeveloped nature of the developing economies. By utilising their natural resources accelerating rate of capital formation and making progress in technology they can increase their levels of productivity and income and break the vicious circle of poverty operating in them.

It may however be noted that after the Second World War and with getting political freedom from colonial rule, in a good number of the underdeveloped countries the process of growth has been started and their gross domestic product (GDP) and per capita income are increasing.

Characteristic # 2. Excessive Dependence on Agriculture :

A developing country is generally predominantly agricultural. About 60 to 75 per cent of its population depends on agriculture and its allied activities for its livelihood. Further, about 30 to 50 per cent of national income of these countries is obtained from agriculture alone. This excessive dependence on agriculture is the result of low productivity and backwardness of their agriculture and lack of modern industrial growth.

In the present-day developed countries, the modern industrial growth brought about structural transformation with the proportion of working population engaged in agriculture falling drastically and that employed in the modern industrial and services sectors rising enormously. This occurred due to the rapid growth of the modern sector on the one hand and tremendous rise in productivity in agriculture on the other.

The dominance of agriculture in developing countries can be known from the distribution of their workforce by sectors. According to estimates made by ILO given in Table 4.1 on an average 61 per cent of workforce of low-income developing countries was employed in agriculture whereas only 19 per cent in industry and 20 per cent in services. On the contrary, in high income, that is, developed countries only 4 per cent of their workforce is employed in agriculture, while 26 per cent of their workforce is employed in industry and 70 per cent in services.

Characteristic # 5. Lower Levels of Human Capital :

Human capital – education, health and skills – are of crucial importance for economic development. In our analysis of human development index (HDI) we noted that there is great disparity in human capital among the developing and developed countries. The developing countries lack in human capital that is responsible for low productivity of labour and capital in them.

Lack of education manifests itself in lower enrolment rate in primary, secondary and tertiary educational institutions which impact knowledge and skills of the people. Lower levels of education and skills are not conducive for the development of new industries and for absorbing new technologies to achieve higher levels of production. Besides, lack of education and skills makes people less adaptable to change and lowers the ability to organise and manage industrial enterprises. Further, in countries like India, advantage of demographic dividend can be taken only if the younger persons can be educated, healthy and equipped with appropriate skills so that they can be employed in productive activities.

The data of various education indicators is given in Table 4.3. It will be seen from this table that as compared to high income countries enrolment in secondary and tertiary educational institutions was 38% and 63% of person of relevant age group in 2009 as compared to 100 per cent in high-income developed countries.

Similarly, enrolment rate in tertiary educational institutions which impart higher liberal, managerial and technical education in developing countries of low income and lower middle income is 6 per cent and 19 per cent respectively of the relevant age group as compared to 67 per cent in high-income developed countries. It will be seen from Table 4.3 that in India enrolment for secondary education is 60 per cent and in China 78 per cent of relevant age group.

Similarly, Table 4.3 reveals that adult literacy rate (percentage of population of ages 15 and older that can read and write a short simple statement in their everyday life) is much lower (62% in low income and 80% in lower middle income developing countries) in 2009 as compared to 98% in high income developed countries. In India adult literacy rate is only 63 per cent in 2009 whereas it is much higher in China (94 %) and Brazil (90 %) as compared to 98% in high-income developed countries.

It is evident from above that educational and skill levels in developing countries are much lower as compared to developed countries. This lowers the quality of the people of developing countries as productive agents and wealth creators.

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