Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • 22 views

    How The Other Three-Quarters Live Inequality Between The World's Rich and Poor

    Uploaded by

    arush
    The document summarizes the stark differences in living standards between wealthy North Americans and poor rural Indian families. It notes that an average North American family of four earns $55,000-$60,000 annually, lives comfortably in an apartment with modern appliances, and has access to education, healthcare, and life expectancy of 77 years. In contrast, an Indian farm laborer family earns just $900-$1200 annually through subsistence farming, lives in a basic mud house with no electricity or clean water, and faces challenges around poverty, health access, and life expectancy of 63 years. It also describes the overcrowding and poverty faced by many in India's cities who struggle with unemployment, homelessness, and poor sanitation.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    How The Other Three-Quarters Live Inequality Between The World's Rich and Poor

    Uploaded by

    arush
    22 views2 pages
    The document summarizes the stark differences in living standards between wealthy North Americans and poor rural Indian families. It notes that an average North American family of four earns $55,000-$60,000 annually, lives comfortably in an apartment with modern appliances, and has access to education, healthcare, and life expectancy of 77 years. In contrast, an Indian farm laborer family earns just $900-$1200 annually through subsistence farming, lives in a basic mud house with no electricity or clean water, and faces challenges around poverty, health access, and life expectancy of 63 years. It also describes the overcrowding and poverty faced by many in India's cities who struggle with unemployment, homelessness, and poor sanitation.

    Original Title

    New Microsoft Word Document

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Available Formats

    DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    The document summarizes the stark differences in living standards between wealthy North Americans and poor rural Indian families. It notes that an average North American family of four earns $55,000-$60,000 annually, lives comfortably in an apartment with modern appliances, and has access to education, healthcare, and life expectancy of 77 years. In contrast, an Indian farm laborer family earns just $900-$1200 annually through subsistence farming, lives in a basic mud house with no electricity or clean water, and faces challenges around poverty, health access, and life expectancy of 63 years. It also describes the overcrowding and poverty faced by many in India's cities who struggle with unemployment, homelessness, and poor sanitation.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    22 views2 pages

    How The Other Three-Quarters Live Inequality Between The World's Rich and Poor

    Uploaded by

    arush
    The document summarizes the stark differences in living standards between wealthy North Americans and poor rural Indian families. It notes that an average North American family of four earns $55,000-$60,000 annually, lives comfortably in an apartment with modern appliances, and has access to education, healthcare, and life expectancy of 77 years. In contrast, an Indian farm laborer family earns just $900-$1200 annually through subsistence farming, lives in a basic mud house with no electricity or clean water, and faces challenges around poverty, health access, and life expectancy of 63 years. It also describes the overcrowding and poverty faced by many in India's cities who struggle with unemployment, homelessness, and poor sanitation.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    You are on page 1of 2

    HOW THE OTHER THREE-QUARTERS LIVE

    Inequality between the world’s rich and poor


     Development economics focuses primarily on the poorest three-fourths (to be precise,
    78 percent) of the world's population.
     These poor are the vast majority, but not all, of the population of developing
    countries, which comprise 81 percent of the world’s population. Many of them are
    inadequately fed and housed, in poor health, and illiterate.
     If you have an average income in the United States and Canada, you are among the
    richest 5 percent of the world's population. The economic concerns of this 5 percent
    are in stark contrast to those of the majority of people on this planet.

    A North American family


     An average intact family (Smith) in the United States and Canada - a family of four
     has an annual income of $55,000 to $60,000
     Live in a three bedrooms apartment, a living room, kitchen, and numerous electrical
    appliances and consumer goods.
     Three meals a day include coffee from Brazil, tinned fruit from the Philippines, and
    bananas from Ecuador.
     Children are in good health.
     Average life expectancy of 77 years.
     Both parents received a secondary education, and the children can be expected to
    finish high school and possibly go to a university.
     Their jobs will probably be relieved by modern machinery and technology.
     Though they seem to have a reasonably good life, they may experience stress,
    frustration, boredom, insecurity, and a lack of meaning and control over their lives –
    air/water polluted, and roads congested..
    Indian farm families
     The family of a farm laborer in India.
     Illustrates the low income of the majority of the world’s population in Asia, Africa,
    and Latin America relative to North America.
     Balayya, Kamani and their four children, ranging in age from 3 to 12 years.
     Combined annual income of $900 to $1200 (but several times that in purchasing
    power), most of which consists of goods produced rather than money earned.
     Under a complex division of labor, the family receives consumption shares from the
    patron (or landlord) in return for agricultural work--plowing, transplanting, threshing,
    stacking, and so on.
     The rice-based daily meal
     One-room mud house thatched with palm leaves, and the crudely stitched clothing are
    produced locally.
     No electricity, clean water, or latrine.
     Kamani fetches the day's water supply from the village well, a kilometer (three-fifths
    of a mile) away.
     The nearest doctor, nurse, or midwife is 50 kilometers away, serving affluent city
    dwellers.
     Average life expectancy is 63 years.
     Few villagers can afford the bus that twice daily connects a neighboring village to the
    city, 40 kilometers away.
     The family's world is circumscribed by the distance a person can walk in a day.
     Neither parents can read or write.
     One of their children attended school regularly for 3 years but dropped out before
    completing primary school. The child will probably not return to school.
     Despite inadequate food, Balayya and the two sons over 7 years old toil hard under
    the blazing sun, aided by only a few simple tools.
     During the peak season of planting, transplanting, and harvesting, the work is from
    sunrise to sunset.
     Kamani, with help from a 6-year-old daughter, spends most of her long working day
    in the courtyard near the house.
     Balayya has no savings.
     Like his father before him, he will be perpetually in debt to the landlord for
    expenditures, not only for occasional emergencies, but also for the proper marriages
    of daughters in the family.
     The common stereotype is that peasant, agricultural societies have populations with
    roughly uniform poverty, a generally false view. A tiny middle and upper class even
    exists

    Congestion, poverty, and affluence in India’s cities


     Few proper footpaths for pedestrians.
     Or separation of fast moving vehicles from slower ones
     Flow of traffic - buses, automobiles, trucks, jeeps, bicycles, human-drawn and motorized
    rickshaws, oxcarts, handcarts, cattle, dogs, and pedestrians walking or carrying head loads.
     Congestion, squalor, destitution, and insecurity characterize the lives of the unemployed,
    underemployed, and marginally employed in cities.
     In the central city, people literally live in the street, where they eat, wash, defecate, and
    sleep on or near the pavement
     During the monsoon season, they huddle under the overhanging roofs of nearby
    commercial establishments.
    Others with menial jobs live in crowded, blighted huts and tenement houses that make up
    urban

    You might also like