As is well known, common concepts: underdevelopment, poverty, poverty, misery and other, similar, do not contain strict quantitative parameters. The "narrow-minded" level of consciousness it is scanty food, bad clothing, dilapidated housing. At a higher level — the level of complexity of the material and spiritual needs is also a State of mind. Over the years, people experiencing hardship and material deprivation, get used to think only about the "daily bread". Poverty as a "dreadful Doom" of the soul, a lack of interest in life.
In other words, not only retardation is characterized by various parameters, but also acts in different forms. Thus, in the social sphere, it is manifested in the sharp differentiation of incomes across countries and population groups; in the sphere of production - at a significantly lower average labor productivity; in everyday life - in the hundreds of millions of people living in primitive dwellings that do not meet basic modern standards, and so on. d. backwardness may occur in the insecurity of huge masses of the population of the "third world" in such vital resources such as fresh water. It is also expressed in the fact that people have no access to medical care, receive an education, finally, have the highest life expectancy in Japan.
There is another important aspect. Poverty has always been a companion of the world population, but according to their qualitative parameters today, it is markedly different from what it was in the past. In addition, the dimensions of poverty in the main regions of the developing world is also quite different, suggesting that the categories such as "absolute poverty" and "relative poverty."
In the world there are more or less common "scale" backwardness, developed at the time the ad hoc working group of the Committee for Development Planning Council.
Singling out as early as 1971 25 "typical", the least developed countries (Afghanistan, Botswana, Burundi, Bhutan, Burkina Faso, Malawi, Mali, Niger, Somalia, Sudan, Rwanda, Chad, Ethiopia, and others.) "Group used three main criteria: annual gross national product per capita - not more than $ 100 .; the share of manufacturing in GDP - up to 10%; the literacy rate of the population aged over 15 years - up to 20%. Since then, it took a long time, but the basic criteria of "underdeveloped" countries remain the same, except for the size of per capita income, which increased slightly.
According to this "scale" the concentration of mass poverty and poverty is highest in the countries of sub-Saharan Africa. It focused a third least developed states of the world in which the value of GDP per capita - only $ 200. Annually. In the same breath with them are some Asian countries (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, etc..), Parts of Latin America and Oceania.
Of course, the criteria of backwardness are not limited to the above-mentioned three. Some scholars as the most generalizing the characteristics of living standards is called the average life expectancy. For this indicator, the gap between the countries of sub-Saharan Africa and Western Europe is almost 30 years old.