How societies change over time
- Summary -

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First Copyright October 2003.  May be used provided proper citation is given.  See note at bottom.
This summary is based on the reports and literature review presented on this web site.

In this summary, we first describe patterns of change for the world and contrast less and more developed countries, as a group. We then show that change at the individual country level is a very complex process. Finally, we describe future research questions.


I. World Changes

World society has changed greatly in the last several decades. Some main patterns are described first.


World population has moved

Population growth has slowed, but has still been higher in developing countries. Thus, the percent of world population living in the developing countries has grown from 70% in 1960 to 81% in 2001. In addition, urbanization has increased, so more of the world population is living in cities.

Changed material conditions

There have also been large changes in material conditions. For example, there has been growth in radio and TV receivers per capita, there has been growth in newspaper circulation per capita among the less developed countries, and there has been tremendous growth in internet use throughout the world.

Improved living conditions

Many changes have been in improved living conditions. For example infant mortality rates (IMR) has declined, illiteracy and percent of population without any schooling has declined, especially among less developed countries, GDP per capita increased and (most likely) poverty has declined. 

Political freedom has also increased in the last several decades, but this growth has only been moderate.

Slower improvement among less developed countries

However, improvements did not procede equally. For example, in 1960, infant mortality rate was more than 4.5 times higher in developing countries than it was among industrialized countries. In 2000, IMR in developing countries was about 10 times higher than was IMR in industrialized countries.

Table 1
Summary, Infant Mortality Rate
( ratio of deaths under 1 year to 1,000 births in the same year.)

Regional summaries
N = 159
N = 187
Industrialized countries
Developing countries
Least developed countries
Ratio = IMR of developing countries / 
            IMR of  industrialized countries
Ratio = IMR of least developed countries / 
            IMR of  industrialized countries
Data source:  
Ratios calculated by Dr. Shackman

That is, infant mortality rate declined in both developing and industrialized countries, but it declined faster in industrialized countries. In addition, unfortunately several countries (e.g., Angola, Botswana, Iraq, Kazakhstan and Zambia) had increases in infant mortality rate.

Also, the illiteracy rate in developing countries changed from about 10 times larger than illiteracy rate in more developed countries in 1970 to about almost 20 times larger in 2000. Again, overall, illiteracy rates declined in both developing and more developed countries, but it declined faster in developed countries.

Similarly, political change happened at a much slower pace in less developed countries. While freedom is now almost universal among developed countries, there has only been moderate growth in freedom among less developed countries, and only 32% of people in less developed countries live in freedom.

Changing patterns and consequences of conflict

One common trend in conflict has been, in the 1970s to the mid 1990s, an increase in civil wars and refugees, then in the 1990s, a decrease in conflict and refugees. The number of international terrorist attacks generally follows this pattern, except that the decline started in the late 1980s. Unfortunately, casualties from terrorism doesn't seem to follow this trend. There have been fewer terrorist attacks, but not fewer casualties. Casualties seem to have increased in Asia, and in the last several years in the Middle East as well.

Civil wars have generally involved at most 50 countries in any year, and more generally fewer than 40, out of about 223 countries. That is, most countries were not involved in conflicts, but a significant number were. Similarly, there have generally been 10 to 15 million refugees each year during the 1980s to 2000, out of a world population of 5 to 6 billion. Only a small percent were ever refugees, but the numbers who were refugees were still significant.


II. Changes at the individual country level

However, social change is a very complex process. For example, while general patterns can be described for Less Developed Countries (LDCs), it is much more difficult to describe change in individual countries. Table 2 shows LDCs with declining living conditions in infant mortality rate, education and political freedom. As can be seen, none of the countries had more than one of these changes. At the specific country level, that is, a decline in living conditions in one area does not necessarily relate to a decline in other areas.

Table 2
Less Developed Countries with declining conditions

  Countries with increased infant mortality rate, 
1980 to 2000
Countries with largest increase in percent without schooling
1980 to 2000
Countries that changed from partly free to   not free.
1980 to 2000
Sri Lanka  
Trinidad and Tobago  
United Arab Emirates    


III. Future research questions

The main question is why LDCs. as a group, experienced less improvement in living conditions than did more developed countries. A second question is how to understand why some countries had large improvements in living conditions while other countries had less improvement or even decline. As described above, as a group, LDCs experienced less improvement in living conditions, but some LDCs had large improvement. That is, what makes countries different and how do these differences contribute to their pattern of change.

The long term goal of our project is to understand these questions. We first start with the reports of overall global change, so that:

There is of course a great deal of research on these questions (e.g., why some countries improve while others do not), listed in the theory and research pages of our web site, and   Much of this is described in our review

The next step in our project will include expanding our literature review, focusing on the questions above, that is why there are differences among countries in their development. We will then prepare and post reports from micro and regional studies examining changes in more detail.

We invite anyone interested to participate.

Prepared by Gene Shackman, Ya-Lin Liu and Wang Xun
First Copyright October 2003. Revised and renewed October 2004.  May be used provided proper citation is given.
Cite as
Shackman, Gene, Ya-Lin Liu and Xun Wang. 2004. How Societies Change Over Time: Summary.  Available at

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last modified 12/11/07
last verified 3/24/09