More than a third of the people in the world suffer from serious malnutrition. In 36 countries, income averages less than $265 per person per year; in another 34, less than $520.
These figures from the World Bank point up the desperate poverty in many of the 100 nations that are euphemistically classified as less developed countries (LDCs). People in the industrialized countries with pressing economic problems of their own might well say, "So what?" Poverty has long been a fact of life, and Americans especially feel that they have done more than their share in giving foreign aid since World War II. It is not, however, a question of altruism. The advanced countries have an urgent self-interest in improving a situation that in a few years may well overshadow any other international issue.
The self-interest is partly political: poverty in the LDCs provides fertile soil for demagogues. So far this spring, there have been three political outbreaks: a Marxist coup in Afghanistan, bloody riots in Peru, a guerrilla invasion of Zaïre. Each has had special causes, but the potential will exist for many more such explosions until the 3 billion or so citizens of LDCs can see some prospect for improvement in their lives. A few years ago, a French author wrote a futuristic novel in which the world's hungry banded together in a kind of vengeful crusade and descended on the industrialized world. One need not take that vision literally to recognize the seriousness of the threat.
Economic self-interest also should prompt the advanced nations to alleviate Third World poverty. It is simply not reasonable to think that the industrialized world can maintain, let alone expand, its economies in a kind of closed circle. It must bring in more and more of the rest of the globe, not only as suppliers of raw materials, but also as trading partners.
The economic conditions of the Third World, of course, are not uniform. The OPEC nations have become world financial powers, and a handful of once depressed countries, such as South Korea and Taiwan, are developing flourishing new industries. But the majority of LDCS have been knocked backward in the 1970s by a devastating one-two punch: oil price boosts that have raised the cost of running the most primitive factories and farm machines, and recession in the industrial world that has restricted markets for cotton, copper, cocoa, tin and other raw materials sold by less developed lands. In many countries of Asia and Africa, economic growth rates have dropped to around 2% a year — not enough to keep up with population expansion, which averages 2.6% for the LDCs. The poor countries have borrowed a staggering $200 billion, half of it since 1973, to pay for imports of fuel and food. Yet despite a startling rise in food imports, from 20 billion tons in 1970 to 45 billion tons in 1975, the average African, for example, had less to eat last year than he did in 1970.