It is a common argument that when economic development takes place in a country the disparities that exist in the that country are reduced and that everyone can therefore be seen to benefit from economic growth and the development that it involves. Despite this, it is manifestly the case that development does not always reduce social and economic disparities. In order to understand this, it is first necessary to understand what economic and social disparates are. Such things can take many forms, but overall I would describe them as inequalities in things such as wealth, education and health care between the richest and poorest in society. In essence, a disparity should be understood as a statistical inequality that shows that certain areas of society have access to many more resources than others.
It is clearly the case that economic development does not guarantee a reduction in such disparities. This can be seen throughout the developing world in which there are countries that have seen large amounts of economic growth on paper but that are still largely unequal in terms of their social structure. One example of this would be China that has seen a large amount of foreign investment in the last ten years and is now a major manufacturing centre that produces millions of goods. Despite this, wealth inequality in the country is as high as it has ever been and many people who work in the production of goods are paid extremely low wages. The same can said for centres of clothing production in India in which several international companies have factories.
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"Economic Disparities and Development".
Although many more people are now employed, it is the case that they are paid extremely low wages. On the surface it appears if life has improved as there has been an increase in economic growth in a country and more people have jobs. In reality, however, it more frequently the case that people simply move from one kind of poverty to another. In both China and India there has been a large migration from the countryside to the cities and to therefore to the centres of industry where people can be employed. Although it appears that these individuals are no longer living in rural poverty, it can argued that they have simply entered another form of deprivation and that they live in extremely exploitative conditions.
This situation of poverty and low wages can be contrasted to individuals who own factories or who are able to benefit from the growing financial sectors of the countries in question. Typically these are people who are already in high social position and who are able to exploit this position in order to profit from the development of an economy. Therefore, while it is the case that the higher classes of society benefit from an increase in wealth, those who work in production are paid extremely low wages and the wealth disparity that was previously present continues to exist, and in many cases can be seen to have increased. This can be seen to be the case in China in which the gap between the lowest earners and the most highly paid people in society has effectively widened since the economy has seen large degrees of investment and since the country has become a site for the production of western commodities.
As such, it is clear that economic development does not necessarily lead to a situation of the reduction of economic and social disparity and that it can even increase it. It is therefore not possible to see such developments as existing outside of more complicated global systems of production within which the development of a country’s economy is no guarantee of an improvement of the quality of life of its citizens.
