PIP: The economic gap between the rich industrialized nations and the underdeveloped countries has been increasing in recent years even as the time needed to travel between them has shrunk. The poor countries of the world, with few exceptions, have remained poor or become poorer. The poor countries are not homogeneous; they vary in their depth of poverty, quantity and type of resources, population density, and other aspects. Obstacles to progress among them are extremely varied. Industrial development in the economically advanced countries may have worsened conditions in some of these countries, but it did not cause their poverty. Many currently underdeveloped countries have been poor since the dawn of history. Even though developing countries appear to have at their disposal the entire apparatus of modern technology, most economists believe that development in them will be much more difficult than in countries that developed in the 19th century. Among the nearly insurmountable obstacles to progress are the difficulty developing countries have in adapting to western technology, which tends to be capital intensive and to require a small though technically skilled labor force. In most developing countries, manpower is abundant but capital and skilled labor are scarce. Modernized technology adapted to the needs of developing countries in reality does not exist. Many poor countries lack preparation for an industrial revolution and require complete social and cultural revolutions as well, indicating that they are economically more impoverished than countries that developed in the 19th century. Most developing countries also have different and more serious population problems than those experienced by western countries in the 19th century. Population density in relation to land and resources and rapid population growth are particularly serious problems in Asia, the poorest and most overpopulated of the world's regions. Disguised unemployment is 1 of the profound problems confronted by such countries in their efforts to develop. Finally, the international context is much less favorable today than it was for countries developing in the past. Private foreign investment from the rich countries to the poor is a dribble in relation to the real needs. Most American investors prefer to use their capital in familiar and safe regions, to the detriment of the developing countries.