Question

. What is uneven development and why does it occur? Compare and contrast the standard of living experienced in first and third world societies using economic and social indicators. Be sure to describe the processes behind these indicators, such as population growth or agricultural societies. For each indicator, explain the cause for this gap. What policies would you promote to improve the quality of life experienced in these regions?

Answer 1

Uneven development refers to a situation where the development in the economy is unevenly distributed. For instance, if the rich are becoming more rich and poor are becoming poorer, it is a situation of uneven development.

Poverty trap, migration from one place to another, low employment opportunities, low investment, etc are some of the reasons why uneven development occurs.

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There are various economic and social indicators which can be used to differentiate between the first and the third world societies. For example, unemployment rate is usually high in the third world societies but comparatively less in the first world. This increases the inequality among those who have the jobs and those who have not in the third world and thus, the standard of living falls.

Similarly, inequality is more in the third world economies, leaving to more people having a low standard of living.

Education can be considered as another factor where third world economies provide lesser opportunities to people to get better education due to their stubborn and less innovative education systems and less infrastructure, leading to a lower standard of living.

Population growth is usually higher in the third world, which leads to more people fighting for scarce resources and therefore, more people being forced to share limited resources. Thus, standard of living falls further.

Finally, third world economies are usually agrarian economies, while first world are more technology driven economies. Since third-worlds still depend heavily on the primitive technologies for the agriculture, the standard of living is usually low there.

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There are many policies that can be recommended for improving the quality of life. First one among these is of course infrastructure. Government should invest heavily on the infrastructure, which will provide more employment opportunities to the people.

Next would be to improve the education system and providing equally improved job opportunities so as to stop the brain drain from the economy.

Finally, government in the third worlds should work on improving the technologies used, so that the economy can focus more on the more important areas and the better technology can take the work off the shoulders of the people, allowing them to utilize their energy in other areas.