The idea has been proposed, by Mark Andersen on the front page, that the United States might be in danger of regressing toward being a developing nation.
I’ll be using data visualization tools from Gapminder, the World Bank, and Our World in Data, to argue that it is not. More than that. I’ll be trying to show that the United States is so highly industrialized and developed, so healthy, wealthy, and well educated, that the idea is not at all serious.
As initial grounding for considering the question, I’ll use a Gapminder video presentation to review the very large worldwide increase in health in the last two hundred years, paying attention to the timing differences between developed and developing nations. Then I’ll consider a bit more closely what a developing nation is, or perhaps was.
For comparison purposes, I’ll look at some development indicators for the United States versus China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Bangladesh — the eight largest nations of the world. 50 years ago, there was an extremely wide development gap between the United States and those seven other nations. Today, the distinction is not as clear.
The true story is not of a United States now in danger of regressing in the direction of developing nation status. It is of many developing nations making enormous progress in recent decades, in the direction of the United States.
1. A Brief Recent Economic History of the World
I’ll be taking some graphs from Gapminder World. This is to help us mind the gap between the rich and poor nations of the world, and how it changes over time. For discussing whether the United States might currently be regressing toward being a developing nation, or in danger of it, I think this basic history is fundamentally important.
Below are three screenshots from the Hans Rosling four-and-a-half minute presentation, “200 Years that Changed the World”. In 1809, all nations had a life expectancy at birth of less than 40 years, and all nations had average incomes less than $3,000. By current standards, all nations were sick and poor.
By 1900, life expectancies have stated to increase, and incomes to rise, in a few nations including the United States. But most of the world still has life expectancies of less than 40 years. A correlation of income and life expectancy is starting to show in the higher income countries.
The 20th century sees a profound worldwide change. In 2007, all nations have a life expectancy at birth of greater than 40 years. Some nations still have average incomes less than $3,000. The correlation between higher incomes and longer life expectancy at birth is strong. At the highest incomes, it is showing a bit of a ceiling. The nations are more spread out, and less tightly clustered.
2. When the Concept of “Developing Countries” Came About
The earliest references to “developing countries” I can find come from the Jamaican physician Cicely Williams: The Organisation of Child Health Services in Developing Countries in 1955 and Social Medicine in Developing Countries in 1958. The term starts showing up in economic literature around 1958.
Around 1958, when the terminology of developed and developing nations takes hold, happens to be around the time that life expectancies in Western European nations all become very high and quite similar. It is essentially the time when the developed nations are completing their rise in health levels, and the developing nations are just starting theirs. The term “developing countries” comes from a time of especially high polarization.
The term is, obviously, euphemism. But it also contains a politics. The developing countries are in fact, developing, as say progressing along Walt Rostow's 1960 universalist stages of growth model. This is in contrast to Alexander Gerschenkron’s 1951 backwardness model, proposing differences in the paths early and late developing nations would follow.
That there is a development model behind what a developing country might be, calls into question a claim that we are regressing toward being a developing nation, about as well as anything else. If the long-industrialized, highly-developed, well-fed, well-educated, healthy, wealthy, and mass-consumerist United States could be regressing towards developing, what could “developing” possibly mean?
3. The Concept of “Developing Countries” is Now Outdated
Last year, the World Bank made a change in how they present data: they will no longer distinguish between developing and developed countries. The distinction has become less relevant and useful.
In the 2016 edition of its World Development Indicators, the World Bank has made a big choice: It’s no longer distinguishing between “developed” countries and “developing” ones in the presentation of its data.
The change marks an evolution in thinking about the geographic distribution of poverty and prosperity. But it sounds less radical when you consider that nobody has ever agreed on a definition for these terms in the first place.
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“The main issue is that there is just so much heterogeneity between Malawi and Malaysia for both to be classified in the same group—Malaysia is more like the US than Malawi,” says Umar Serajuddin, a senior economist in the World Bank’s statistics office. “When we lump disparate countries together in the same group, it isn’t really useful.”
The World Bank is eliminating the term “developing country” from its data vocabulary, Quartz
Below are two screenshots from a Hans Rosling presentation, “The Bangladesh Miracle.” In 1962, there was a developing world, and an industrialized world. In developing countries, they had more than five children per woman, and they had child mortality rates that ran from 10% to higher. In industrialized countries, they had less than four children per woman, and child mortality rates less than 10%. The United States, here, is the biggest yellow bubble.
But it is not 1962 any more. Fertility rates and child mortality rates in Bangladesh have plummeted. The rates are in what had been labelled the industrialized world.
In the discussion below, I will be presenting some charts for the largest population nations of China, India, the United States, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Bangladesh. Together, they constitute somewhat more than half the world’s population.
In 1962, the United States and the other large nations are clearly separated, in a way that could be called developed or industrialized or advanced, and developing.
In 2015, the sharp distinction is lost. The nations are spread out. The story here is not of the United States regressing towards being a developing nation. It is of developing nations catching up.
4. Newborn and Infant Mortality Rates
The relatively high infant mortality rates in the United States, compared to developed nations, will often be pointed out. Recent data, released last month, shows that U.S. infant mortality rates have dropped a bit.
The U.S.’s relatively high infant mortality rate is one of the darkest stains on the nation’s public-health record. Compared to babies in other wealthy nations, infants in the U.S. are far less likely to make it to their first birthdays—in 2010, a U.S. baby was more than twice as likely to die in its first year than a baby in Norway, the Czech Republic, Portugal, and Japan.
But new data released Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that the U.S. infant mortality rate has fallen 15 percent in the past decade, a promising signal that improvements in health-care policies and access are making an impact. Between 2005 and 2014, the rate decreased from 6.86 to 5.82 infant deaths per 1,000 live births, a decrease of 15 percent.
The U.S. Infant Mortality Rate Is Falling, But Still Worse Than Peer Nations, Christina Cauterucci, Slate
Here are infant mortality rates since 1990. The general story of developing nations progressing in the direction of the United States is clear here.
And here, newborn mortality rates. I’ve included Canada in this chart, because it tracks so closely with the United States. Canada and the United States, on this measure, are hardly different at all.
5. Economic Inequality
In a lower income nation, economic inequality might be high or low, depending on the economic system. Namibia has very high economic inequality; Serbia very low.
In higher income nations, economic inequality is generally low. The United States and Singapore are rather stark exemptions from this general trend.
A Gapminder World graph, showing the 8 nations used for comparison in this diary, is here. Using GINI as the inequality measure, Brazil has much high economic inequality than the United States; Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan much lower; and China and Nigeria are in the same general vicinity as us.
6. The Human Development Index as a Development Measure
There has never been any one agreed-on standard to measure national development.
GDP per capital and GNI per capita are popular, for being easily-to-use single indicators that correlate with non-financial quality of life measures.
The Human Development Index, from the United Nations Development Program, is intended to more closely capture some people-centered aspects, beyond just national income. From a UNDP explanation of the index, here is a chart of the components:
A graph of the Human Development Index again shows the story of developing nations starting to catch up to the United States in recent decades. The idea of the United States being in danger of regressing toward developing nation status is not serious. The development gap, though closing, is still too large.
The next three graphs are intended to show distinctions in the size of the gap between the United States and the other large nations, in different components of the Human Development Index.
The gap in the income component is very large and is growing.
The gap in life expectancy at birth is not so large, excepting Nigeria, and is shrinking.
And then, mean years of schooling, looking at the long term story staring in 1870. China, Indonesia, and Brazil here, have an 8th grade education as typical. Pakistan, five years.
The enormous human population represented in this chart, combined with the improvement in educational levels shown in the last 50 years, is a human development success story of a magnitude so large it is hard to fathom.
And no one sitting in a nation where 13 years of formal schooling is typical, should take their own stunningly high national educational achievement levels for granted.
No, the United States is not regressing toward being a developing nation.
7. Access to Improved Sanitation as a Development Measure
Finally, let’s look at access to improved sanitation. Access in the United States is effectively 100%. In 1990, it was 99.5%. China today is nearing 80%; India is around 40%.
For considering the chart below, and whether the United States might really be in danger of regressing towards developing nation status, note that as improved sanitation, this counts.