Most people have an idea of what it means to be poor. We think of conditions like hunger, homelessness, preventable diseases, unemployment, and illiteracy as elements of poverty. Those and other issues will be covered later in this book. However, from a social and economic standpoint, poverty is a complex topic that can be difficult to describe in objective terms. Most governments and social servi…
Underdeveloped countries are at the very bottom of the global economy, with widespread extreme poverty and dire living conditions. They usually have little or no infrastructure or reliable health care and other social services. Many have experienced long-term political unrest in the form of civil war or armed conflict with other nations, or have been subject to unstable governments, dictatorships,…
An emerging economy is one that is moving from developing to developed (or industrial),while a transition economy is one evolving from a planned economy (meaning one controlled by the government, as in the former Soviet bloc countries) to a free market economy like those in North America and Europe. A country may be both emerging and transitional. Countries undergoing these economic shifts experie…
Developing countries are those with incomes (in terms of gross domestic product, or GDP) that fall between the least developed countries and the industrialized nations. Most countries in the world can be described as "developing": neither hopelessly poor nor hopefully rich. These countries have segments of deep, absolute poverty and instances of great wealth in their populations, but…
Although the majority of the world's poor live in underdeveloped and developing countries, a fair number also live in the developed world—some in the wealthiest countries on earth. The economic gap between rich and poor nations has been widening since the 1980s, but the gap between rich and poor within developed countries has also been growing, as it has in transition economies. …
Virtually all groups that study poverty—from international organizations like the United Nations and the World Bank to small local charities—agree that the most effective way to reduce it is to improve the social, economic, and political situation of women and, by extension, children. Women's levels of health, education, and security reflect those of their families. When a mot…
Conditions in the environment that have a negative impact on the health and well-being of a population are known as environmental hazards. These can be natural events, such as an overabundance of insects that destroys crops; a weather pattern that causes a drought or flood; or a sudden, violent disaster such as an earthquake or volcanic eruption. Environmental hazards can also be human-caused prob…
The populations of countries engaged in conflict or warfare almost always experience some degree of economic hardship. During World War II (1939–45) much of Europe was reduced to near starvation, and even the United States—which saw no military action on its own soil—imposed strict rationing of goods on its citizens. This is because during times of war financial resources that…
How effective has the international community been in combating global poverty throughout and since the twentieth century? The answers—for there are many—are varied and surprising. Some experts estimate that society is well on its way to achieving the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals, which, among other things, strive to cut extreme poverty rates in half by the yea…