page_title: International development
section_title: International economic inequality
hierarchical_section_title: International development / Concepts / International economic inequality
caption_attribution_description: English: World map of countries by GDP per capita (nominal) for 2018. &#160; &gt;$60,000 &#160; $50,000 - $60,000 &#160; $40,000 - $50,000 &#160; $30,000 - $40,000 &#160; $20,000 - $30,000 &#160; $10,000 - $20,000 &#160; $5,000 - $10,000 &#160; $2,500 - $5,000 &#160; $1,000 - $2,500 &#160; &lt;$1,000
context_page_description: International development or global development is a broad concept denoting the idea that societies and countries have differing levels of "development" on an international scale. It is the basis for international classifications such as developed country, developing country and least developed country, and for a field of practice and research that in various ways engages with international development processes. There are, however, many schools of thought and conventions regarding which are the exact features constituting the "development" of a country.
  Historically, development has often been largely synonymous with economic development. More recently, writers and practitioners have begun to discuss development in the more holistic and multi-disciplinary sense of human development. Other related concepts are, for instance, competitiveness, quality of life or subjective well-being.
  "International development" is different from the simple concept of "development".
context_section_description: International development institutions and International Organisations such as the UN promote the realisation of the fact that economic practices such as rapid globalisation and certain aspects of international capitalism can lead to, and, allegedly, have led to an economic divide between countries, sometimes called the North-South divide. Such organisations often make it a goal and to help reduce these divides by encouraging co-operation amongst the Global South and other practices and policies that can accomplish this.
  International development can also cause inequality between richer and poorer factions of one nation's society. For example, when economic growth boosts development and industrialisation, it can create a class divide by creating demand for more educated people in order to maintain corporate and industrial profitability. Thus the popular demand for education, which in turn drives the cost of education higher through the principle of supply and demand, as people would want to be part of the new economic elite. Higher costs for education lead to a situation where only the people with enough money to pay for education can receive sufficient education to qualify for the better-paying jobs that mass-development brings about. This restricts poorer people to lesser-paying jobs but technological development makes some of these jobs obsolete (for example, by introducing electronic machines to take over a job, such as creating a series of machines such as lawn mowers to make people such as gardeners obsolete). This leads to a situation where poorer people can't improve their lives as easily as they could have in a less developed society. That is partially why institutions such as the Center for Global Development are searching for "pro-poor" economic policies.
caption: Countries by 2018 GDP (nominal) per capita[34]
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