Have you ever seen an ad, picture, or clip on the news of a developing country and wondered, “What’s it like to live like that?” Your answer might be based on actual experience if you lived in that country, or you might form your opinion by reading about conditions in different types of countries or watching a video, such as any of these:

The United Nations and World Bank compare such parameters as gross domestic product (GDP), education, literacy rate, health care, and life expectancy to distinguish between developed and developing countries. Using these measures and those for standards of living, level of industrialization, and quality and range of infrastructure, countries are placed in a sort of scale called the Demographic Transition Model (DTM).

(Roser and Ortiz-Supina, 2018)

Assignment Details

Choose ONE of the following four topics. For that topic, and using what you have learned about living conditions and the DTM, discuss your experience in a Phase 4 country (presumably the United States) and compare and contrast that with the same resource in a country in Phase 2 or 3 of the DTM.

Topic Choices

  • Describe your educational experience in a developed country, and compare it to the educational experience in a developing country. 
  • Describe the last time you went to the hospital, and contrast how this experience might differ in a developing country.
  • Describe your last trip to the grocery store, and compare the availability of food with that in a developing country. 
  • Explain your biggest use of water, and then describe how this differs from the availability and supply of water in a developing country.