According to the United Nations, it no longer
judges a country by a particular stage that
it is at in its development.
Nonetheless, countries are ranked higher in
terms of the comforts and opportunities afforded
to its citizens.
We now call this the Human Development Index.
Back in the day, we would judge a country
by its stage of industrialization, and the
first developed country in this sense was
the UK.
Belgium followed, then Germany, then the USA,
and then France and other western European
nations.
If we look at today’s Human Development
Index, the top ten countries in order are:
Norway, Australia, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark,
Singapore, the Netherlands, Ireland, Iceland,
Canada, and 10th, believe it or not, is the
USA.
The UK, which was once in first place, now
stands in 16th place.
Today we’ll look at why, in this episode
of the Infographics Show, 3rd World vs 1st
World Countries - What's The Difference?
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First of all, many people think we should
stop using these terms of first and third
world.
The terms are seen as insulting and vague,
and while some nations might not be economic
powerhouses, what’s to say the citizens
don’t live a happy and safe life, even without
a Big Mac and fries?
If we go back some years to 1952, a French
demographer Alfred Sauvy wrote about “Three
worlds, one planet.”
It is he who is said to have coined the term.
By first world, he meant the USA, Japan, South
Korea and Western Europe.
By second world, he meant the Soviet Union,
China, Cuba and communist allies.
At the bottom, in the third world, he meant
all the rest, societies that were mostly agrarian
and poor.
One of the reasons the term is decried is
because it was so vague.
There wasn’t really much analysis, and so
in spite of northern Brits living in industrial
slums and working in inhumane conditions as
George Orwell wrote in ‘The Road to Wigan
Pier’, because of Britain’s relative wealth,
it was deemed first world.
In fact, these days a professor at Harvard
Medical School has used the term ‘Fourth
World’, which includes the USA.
This means a country of great wealth where
some parts of society live on the fringes,
jobless, often drug-addicted, with no healthcare
and not so many opportunities to change things
around.
They are living in a first world with third
world standards.
So, this is a rather confusing question we
have posed.
Do we use the term developing?
We can look at what has happened over many
parts of Asia in the last twenty years.
While parts of China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia,
and Thailand still have pervasive abject poverty,
there is a lot more money.
It isn’t exactly getting to everyone, though,
and one might ask if farming rice in China
was any worse than making iPhone components
for hours on end in a factory in a polluted
city.
But with this new money, infrastructure has
improved, and so too has healthcare and education.
We could say these countries are verily developing.
But why is Norway the most developed?
Is it still not developing?
Does developed mean stasis?
Not really, all countries are still developing,
but others could be said to be going through
major changes.
The U.S. Department of State explains why
Norway is so developed: “Per capita GDP
is among the highest in the world,” we are
told, due to thriving industries in this nation
of just 5.2 million people.
Just take into account that Delhi has 18.6
million people.
You only need to walk around Delhi to see
poverty all around you, you don’t have to
go looking for it.
India is developing due to its fairly amazing
economic growth, but still, it was reported
in 2014 that 58% of the Indian population
were living on less than $3.10 per day.
India puts the poverty line at $1.90 a day.
This may be enough not to starve to death,
but we can imagine that those people living
on that amount don’t have the freedom and
opportunities that Norway’s less well-to-do
people have.
In fact, in Norway, the average income is
more than $35,000 a year.
Only 3 percent of the population work very
long hours, and all Norwegians, according
to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation
and Development, can expect good, “environment
quality, jobs and earnings, income and wealth,
education and skills, housing, work-life balance,
civic engagement, social connections, and
health status.”
The same definitely cannot be said of any
developing nation.
Nonetheless, anyone in India will tell you
about great transformations, more job opportunities,
an easing of poverty, and how far the country
has come in terms of developing technology.
Norway is top of the Human Development Index,
so we could say this is the first of the first
world countries, even though we don’t use
that term anymore.
The top 51 nations fall in the ‘High’
Human Development bracket.
Out of 188 countries, India comes in at 131st.
Indeed, India’s super rich wealth and massive
growth has yet to trickle down to many of
the masses.
The HDI has three main categories: Environmental
sustainability, economic sustainability and
social sustainability.
Right at the bottom of the HDI is the Central
African Republic.
Again, while we don’t use the term third
world anymore, you could say that this might
be the bottom of the list in so far as we
have a term for not being developed.
Why is that?
For starters, life expectancy there is only
52, or thereabouts.
It is tied with Angola, and only better than
one country, which is Sierra Leone.
People there can expect to live to 50.1.
By comparison, Norwegians on average can expect
to live about 30 years longer.
In India, the life expectancy is 68, somewhere
in the middle.
The 4.6 million people living in the Central
African Republic have faced extreme poverty,
war, ethnic and religious cleansing, and political
violence.
It’s said to be the worst place in the world
to be young, and even if you get a job, the
average wage per year is said to be $400,
although this might need updating.
Half of the population is illiterate, and
if you go to school you might not do more
than 4 or 5 years.
It has one of the highest maternal mortality
rates in the world, and about a quarter of
the women have undergone genital mutilation.
If that isn’t bad enough, human rights hardly
exist.
Complain, and you might find yourself being
arrested summarily and sent to a terrible
jail.
Corruption is rife, and there is not much
anyone can do.
The country has a history of labor rights
violations as well as child labor.
Children and women regularly face violence
after being accused of being witches.
One travel blogger talked of his experience
in the capital of Bangui, saying it was “a
mess that is always teetering on the edge
of violence.”
We are of course mentioning the very worse
things, and no doubt a lot of people live
a happy life there.
We just want to outline a kind of first, second
and third comparison.
That’s why we have picked these three nations.
We could also look at the country of Botswana,
which comes in 108th place.
This is quite low, but if you’ve read Malcom
Gladwell’s book, ‘Outliers’, you’ll
know it's home to possibly some of the happiest,
laidback, self-sufficient people in the world.
Or was, until recent times.
According to Gladwell, they have a two hour
work day on average, and play around most
of the time.
They don’t need iPhones or dinner sets made
by Hermes.
They are the last Hunter/Gatherer tribe called
the ǃKung Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert.
These wanderers also moved through Angola
(which is placed 150th on the HDI).
Unfortunately, what they hunt and gather is
being destroyed by development.
Anthropologists say they get over conflicts
in peaceful ways and generally are a happy
lot.
They provide for their kids with devotion,
and remain mostly monogamous.
Wealth is shared with everyone.
In more recent years, that has changed as
some were forced to settle in one place, and
that’s when the problems arose.
As soon as they got doors, they started shutting
them and sharing less.
They are also very much third world by western
standards.
So, are they any worse off than an overworked,
overweight, diabetes and hypertension suffering
rich first world man that takes pills to sleep
and often drinks to oblivion?
Let us know in the comments!
Also, be sure to check out our other video
called What Can You Buy with a Million Dollars?!
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See you next time!
