Assistance to the needy in less - developed areas

The problem of the relief of poverty in less-developed countries is necessarily very different in character from the corresponding problem in more advanced and industrialized countries. Poverty is one of the components of the vicious circle of which the other components are malnutrition, disease, under-production and igno rance. All five components, in varying degrees, are characteristic of the conditions obtaining in less-developed countries and the plans for social and economic development aim to break this circle. Schemes for the provision of assistance to the needy have, undoubt edly, a part to play in these plans.

2. The elimination of ignorance by progress in education and public administration represents a major contribution to the reduc tion of both mass and individual poverty. The conquest of disease, similarly, removes a major cause of the inability of individuals to provide for their own needs, and contributes to the material pros perity of the whole community in so far as it adds to the productivity of labour. However, improvements in public health may, at the same time, tend to accentuate conditions which cause mass and individual poverty, at any rate until some degree of stability has been reached. Better health and a lower death rate speed up the growth of population if the birth rate is unchanged. The result is to add to the difficulty of expanding production rapidly enough to provide an adequate supply of food and other goods and services to the mass of consumers, particularly in those less-developed agricultural countries where there is an insufficiency of cultivable land. Moreover, in so far as the increase in population results in a higher proportion of "non-active" persons, it increases the depen dency factor which, in turn, has an important bearing on individual poverty.