GLOBALISATION AND THE NEO-LIBERAL OFFENSIVE/21The Third World and Eastern Europe
Over the last 15 to 20 years, more than a hundred countries in the
Third World or the former Eastern Bloc have experienced a bigger
and more lasting collapse in growth and drop in the standard of
living than what industrialised countries went through during the
deep crisis of the 1930s, (p. 7)In the 11 October 1996 edition of Le Monde, UNDP director James
Gustave Speth said, 'In fact, in more than a hundred countries per
capita revenue is lower today than it was 15 years ago. It is quite clear
that about 1.6 billion people are worse off than they were at the
beginning of the 1980s.' It is worth noting, of course, that the
beginning of the 1980s coincides with the generalisation of neo-
liberal policies across the globe.
The Third World
In the Third World, 1.3 billion people survive on less than S1 per day.
Between 1987 and 1993, 100 million more people joined the ranks
of those earning less than SI a day (p. 4).
160 million children suffer from moderate or serious malnutrition.
110 million children do not attend primary school, 275 million do
not attend secondary school (p. 33).
There are 1 billion illiterate people in the world, of whom 840
million are adults in the Third World. Of these, 538 million, or nearly
two-thirds, are women (p. 26).
840 million people go hungry every day or experience recurrent
food insecurity (p. 5).
One billion are not connected to clean water supplies (p. 5).
One third of people in the least developed countries do not reach the
age of 40 (p. 5).
2.5 billion people do not have access to proper sanitation facilities
(p. 32).
Eastern Europe
With the restoration of capitalism in the countries of the former
Eastern Bloc, the average rate of absolute poverty in the region -
based on a daily wage of S4 (p. 2)-has risen from 4 per cent in 1988