Baccalaureate Oral Exam 2009: Series A4-A5
Town and Country
[...] It is a myth that the urban populations of developing countries are healthier, more literate and more prosperous than populations living in the countryside. According to UN-HABITAT, the world's one billion slum dwellers are worse off than their rural counterparts, are more likely to die earlier, experience more hunger and disease, attain less education and have fewer chances of employment.
Child malnutrition in slums is worse than that in rural areas. Urban children are also more likely to die from waterborne and respiratory illnesses. In China, a huge proportion of the rural population that has moved to cities, perhaps 150 million people, enjoys neither the benefits that rural farmers receive nor the subsidies that city-born dwellers are given. Official figures in China forecast that by 2020 around 60% of the population will be living in cities or towns, many of them in slums.
The United Nations estimates that the percentage of the global population living in urban areas is expected to grow from 47% in 2000 to 60% by 2025. Most urban growth during the coming decades is expected to take place in the least developed countries primarily because of migration from rural areas. Higher food prices will further impoverish low income urban dwellers, who are rapidly becoming the majority of the population in many of these countries.
The Economist, January 5th, 2008, p. 12