Security Expenditure and Economic Growth in Developing Countries

In a survey of the state of the world economy in the early 1980s, the United Nations Department of International Economic and Social Affairs painted a sombre picture of conditions in the Third World. It states1 that, in 1982, output failed to increase for the first time in the postwar period. During the year, the recessionary conditions in fact spread to embrace a number of the energy-exporting developing countries which, in preceding years, had been centers of growth in the world economy … For the least developed countries and food deficit countries in general, the situation became particlarly precarious … Despite the prospects of a mild recovery in the main industrial countries, the outlook for developing countries is bleak. A number of forces are at work that are at present restraining growth in developing countries, so that the slight improvement in the prospects for the developed market economies does not translate into a significantly better outlook for developing countries. In fact, a further decline in per capita output appears to be in store for a considerable number of individual countries in 1983 as well as for the group as a whole.