![]() | |||||||
| >> Foreign Aid in the National Interest >> Overview >> 50 years of development gains |
|
Jump to Overview Sections:
The development progress in the past half century has been extraordinary. Developing countries now have an average infant mortality rate (69 for every 1,000 live births) equivalent to what industrial countries had in 1950 (see feature overleaf). In 1951, 40 percent of people in industrial countries had a secondary education; today 50 percent of people in developing countries do.
Over the past half-century most of the world's people, including the poorest, have seen continual and substantial improvement in their basic living conditions. Developing countries are catching up with industrial countries-particularly in life expectancy, nutrition, and literacy. And in infant mortality and secondary school enrollments they have already reached or surpassed the levels achieved by industrial countries in the early 1950s, when the era of foreign aid began. page 2 |
|