Underdevelopment can be associated with the lack of infrastructure and basic services.
Underdevelopment is a concept that is used to name the situation or state of a nation that does not have a level of socioeconomic development considered adequate . In other words: underdevelopment indicates that a country's development is below a certain level.
It is important to note that there is no specific criterion to classify a region as underdeveloped. Generally the notion is linked to countries with precarious economies , little productive capacity, poor public services and a high poverty rate.
Underdevelopment concept
Specifically, we can determine that underdeveloped countries are those in which their inhabitants have serious difficulties and even inability to access services and elements that are considered basic when it comes to having quality of life. We are referring to drinking water, health services, housing, education, employment opportunities and even food.
There are authors who warn that, although a country may show certain positive economic indices, it may also have sectors of the population that suffer from poor living conditions . Thus, in a nation that is classified as developed, there are people who have their basic needs unsatisfied.
Poverty affects underdevelopment.
Different considerations
Some intellectuals, on the other hand, focus on the definition of poverty. It could be said that countries whose inhabitants have a salary of less than X dollars per month are underdeveloped; However, these citizens can count on free education, quality public health and housing provided by the State . Thus the country's classification as underdeveloped is called into question.
In addition to all of the above, we have to make it clear that although we always talk about underdeveloped countries and the third world as synonyms, they are not. And this last term was created in the period of the Cold War as a way to define or identify the nations that decided not to align themselves with NATO and the well-known capitalist system, which were the two characteristics that the countries were considered to have. called first world countries.
The UN and underdevelopment
As a reference, we can mention the Human Development Index measured by the UN and which includes life expectancy, literacy and GDP per capita, among other indicators. From these parameters, we could indicate that countries such as Niger , Sierra Leone and Burkina Faso are underdeveloped since they show lower development than most nations.
In the same way, it must be taken into consideration that the aforementioned report refers to four categories regarding the aforementioned human development:
– Low human development , in which there are 46 countries that are considered underdeveloped countries. Specifically, we are referring to nations such as Kenya, Madagascar, Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mozambique, Cameroon, Mauritania, Chad, Solomon Islands...
– Average human development , which includes from Algeria to the Dominican Republic passing through other countries such as Jordan, for example.
– High human development . In this fourth category we can refer to countries such as Uruguay, Bulgaria, Cuba...
– Very high human development . Within this other section we must highlight countries such as Spain, the United States, Norway, Germany...