Response 10: Dealing with poverty and developing societies

The problem of wealth and poverty is a social ill. A country's state of development dictates how it deals with those issues. Established, developed nations are the ones that have time to look at their social construction and want to try and fix them. The US, UK, and other major European countries have come far enough economically that they can care for those who didn't entirely benefit from ecnomic policies. Those in the best "health" can take the time to deal with the welfare of all it's people. Unhealthy states, on the other hand, tend to focus more on the betterment of their country first.

Take China for example. China is now going through its industrial revolution and its economy is booming because of it. China wants to reach superpower status, so they ignore human rights and environmental issues within their state. This country of roughly 1 billion people has a huge amount of its citizens classified as the rural poor. China, being a developing nation, is ignoring their poor for now to continue their steamtrain towards being developed.

India too follows this trend. As seen in the recent box office hit, Slumdog Millionaire, there are many slum towns within major cities that are just ignored. The poor are grossly poorer than the poor of the United States. This is because India is still developing; they have yet to lift a majority of their people out of poverty. The more stereotypical "third world" also falls under this trend. States of this classification are just poor in general compared to other states. The Democratic Republic of the Congo, for example, is plagued by ridiculous inflation rates and widespread poverty. This is due to its corrupt government, which is taking all the profits and manipulating the state's economy to keep the people down. This terribly unhealthy nation is defined by the lack of any action to deal with its poverty by its society.

Another way to view this litmus test to a healthy county is to examine the difference between poverty and economic inequality. In my world politics class, we're learning about how some experts believe we should focus on how inequally wealth is distributed in a country rather than poverty itself. The models given to support this were all developed or up-and-coming countries, like the US, Brazil, and China. The most developed countries, namely the US , have most of their wealth concentrated in small top percentiles of the population (i.e. top 2% in the US). The up-and-comers weren't as bad, but studies showed that the division between the rich and the poor had greatly increased as these economies of these states grew. It seems that as a society lifts itself out of "undeveloped" status, the divisions of the rich and poor inherently are created. The great divide that seems to occur is unpleasant to society, so it responds and tries to bring its poor up with the rest of the country. An undeveloped nation won't do that because there is yet to be a great enough divide in socioeconomic hierarchy in the general public. The societies most fervent and successful in their fight against poverty are only those that are truely developed nations.