Why Some Countries Are Poor?

A lot of people in the world are currently facing a disproportional distribution of wealth; there are so many poor people and only some rich ones. In fact, this does not only apply to people, but also to nations. We can see that there are some rich nations such as: United States, France, and England, but there are also some poor ones such as: Somalia and Bangladesh. As it is discussed in our book “Society in Focus,” (pages 240-245,) this disparity between nations might be very controversial involving different causes such as: corruption, lack of resources, technology, and hard-working people. In addition to that, some sociologists also rely on the colonialism, modernization, and dependency approaches to explain such inequality among countries. However, from my point of view, corruption, lack of resources, and the colonialism approach have played an important role in this inequality.

I come from a poor country named Paraguay, which is located in the heart of South America. Even though the poverty rate has decreased in my country, 32.4% of the population still lives under extremely bad conditions. Unfortunately, corruption and bribery are one of the main reasons why wealth is disproportionately distributed in Paraguay. This is due to the fact that people are used to practice bribery as a result of a lack of education and civic culture, but at the same time because workers from the public sector do not earn what they deserve. As a result, a lot of money that should be invested in education or health care, it is instead taken illegally by politics or by people who work for the government and have some kind of power. Consequently, the population suffers from the lack of hospital supplies, public infrastructure, and poor education.

Subsequently, I believe that another reason why some countries are poor while others are rich is because of the lack of resources needed to operate and compete internationally. For instance, for some countries