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World development

World development, often referred to as global development, can be defined as a standard of living which affects the world’s countries. There are many forms of classification linked to world development levels, such as , and . In simple terms it is easy to divide the world into rich and poor, but in reality there is a development continuum which is a sliding scale from very rich to extremely poor.

  • Development Continuum - the scale showing the path to development running from LICs to HICs
  • Development Gap - the divide between the rich and the poor

The world's population is growing rapidly, and as of August 2017 stood at 7.3 billion people. The highest rates of population growth are occurring in low income countries (LICs), such as Zimbabwe, Malawi and Niger. Some countries are experiencing population decline, for example Japan, Russia and Ukraine.

Low-income countries (LICs) have very different economies to high-income countries (HICs). In HICs many people have formal jobs in which they have set hours, a monthly wage, healthy working conditions and they pay tax. Whereas people in LICs often work in agricultural jobs and informal jobs, in which they have no set hours or wage, unhealthy conditions, and pay little or no tax.

As a result, there is a huge contrast in a country’s average income or .

The map shows some of the world’s global cities and the income group they belong to.

A map showing the world’s global cities.

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