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generally to underdeveloped countries; we will continue to say, as we often do now: “This is what an underdeveloped country should do.”
    Or this will be the tendency. But, in fact, there is now considerable differentiation in our prescription for the poor countries. India, in per capita income, is almost as poor as any country in Africa. Yet we recognize that her capacity to use capital is much greater. So is her ability to plan the use of her resources. And with mention of India, the problem of population comes almost immediately to mind.
    The African countries, for their part, are strongly interested in education. And gradually a design for development is emergingwhich places primary emphasis on this. And this is in contrast, in turn, with the seeming requirements of many of the Latin American countries where social reform occupies a place of particular urgency. Though in analysis, we still speak of the underdeveloped country, for purposes of prescription we make important distinctions. There is need, evidently, for bringing the analysis abreast of the differentiation that practical judgment requires.
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    In recent years at Harvard, we have been experimenting with a classification of underdeveloped countries that is based on the obstacle or combination of obstacles which, in the given case, is the effective barrier to economic advance. 7 The identification of these obstacles or barriers is not a highly scientific exercise. It involves observation and judgment, and those who assess truth in accordance with whether it depends on precise measurement will find much in the classification to which they can object. However, the classification is not based on small distinctions. For selecting the largest tree from among those of similar size, there is no substitute for measurement. But if one tree towers over the others, much can be accomplished by inspection. And all scientific method must be seen in context. Imperfect classification is better than the aggregation of unlike cases. It still remains the first step toward science, however short the step or intractable the material.
    The classification is a four-fold one. Three classes are important for present purposes; the fourth embraces the countries where there is no strongly operative obstacle to development and where, accordingly, it proceeds at a more or less rapid pace. It is useful to give each of the classes or models not only a number but an identification with the part of the world to which they are the most applicable. Their application is not, however, confined to thegeographical or other area in the designation. The three models of underdevelopment are:

    As noted, the Models are set apart from each other by the barrier or combination of barriers to development which are operative in each case. In some instances, the barriers which characterize one Model are also operative in another. There are, as might be expected, intermediate or mixed cases. And the geographical designations do not include all of the countries of the area. Ceylon is not typical of the South Asian Model; Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya are not characteristic of the Sub-Sahara African Model; Mexico and Costa Rica do not conform to the Latin American Model; and Brazil, a notably difficult case, conforms more closely to that Model in the northern than in the southern states.
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    In the Model I or Sub-Sahara countries, the principal barrier to development is the absence of what I shall call a minimum cultural base. It is important, both for reasons of tact and precision, that this be not misinterpreted; the problem is not absence of aptitude but absence of opportunity. Most of the countries that are described by this Model have recently emerged from colonialism, sometimes of the more regressive sort. More fortunate countries have had decades and centuries of preparation for the tasks of economic development. These have had only a few years. “To an extent unmatched in most of the