What is development?
“This is the growth in a place for the better” is what our geography book says. To measure a country’s development, you need to look at serveral factors, these are called development indicators:
• If people are well-fed
• Infant mortality (this is how many children die before the age of 5)
• Life expectancy (how long a average inhabitant can expect to live)
• Literacy rate (how many people over the age of 15 who can read and write a simple sentence)
• The access to clean and safe water
• Do women have the same opportunities as men do
• How much money does a average person posses
• Do they have access to medical help
• Unemployment
• Internet

What is the development Gap?
The development gap is the difference between MEDC’s and LEDC’s in development. The MEDC’s score better in almost all factors we just mentioned.
For the growth of the gap are three kind of reasons: historical reasons, environmental and social economic reasons. We are now going to describe the reasons. An example of historical reasons is the abuse the Europeans made of the Africans, an example of environmental reasons is that Africa is full of deserts which make it hard to grow food, the climate gives problems in many other ways too (too much or too little rain). Social economic reasons are wars and most a lot of LEDC’s borrow money against interests, which only make the debt worse when they have to pay back.

Two countries compared: NL vs. Congo
In this chapter we’ll compare two countries, a MEDC and a LEDC. We chose The Netherlands as the MEDC and Congo as a LEDC. We’ll make a table and write several development indicators in. Here it is:

Development indicators                The Netherlands      Congo
Malnutrition (under nourished)     0.4 %                       71.2 %
Infant mortality (p. 1000)             4                               230
Life expectancy                             78.5                          52.5
Literacy rate                                 99 %                         68.7 %
Water access                               100 %                        58 %
School enrollment (secondary)     92.5 %                      38.6 %
GDP (per capita)                           30951                       750
Access medical help (number
of inhabitants per doctor)             398                           4000
Unemployment rate                      3.3%                         %NA*
Internet access (p. 1000)             498                           9.3

* A lot people work in the unregistered sector so it isn’t exactly to determine.

Is the development gap getting wider?
Now it’s time to say whether I think the development gap is getting wider or not. In my opinion it think it is getting narrower because the difference is getting smaller. That’s because we send a lot of money to the poor countries by charity’s. In fact: each inhabitant in Holland donated 239.3 on average so that’s approximately 16.000.000 x 220.4 = 3.526.400.000 € so 3.526 million. That’s a lot but of course it could always be better but it’s a huge amount of money. Also several new inventions like The World bank and Micro-credit helps the poor countries to develop.