Cambodia

---

Welcome to the World: The Lottery of Birth is a movie that explores the path ahead of children born in Sierra Leone, Cambodia, and the United States. The former two are some of the most impoverished areas in the world, yet even in the United States the prospects of birth are the bleakest in twenty years, with an increasing homeless population and growing obesity rates. It talks about how in Cambodia, mostly everyone can expect to be born into a family making less than $1 a day, such in the case of Pisey, who needed to collect trash on the sides of the road to make some money for his family. In Sierra Leone, even though there is a booming diamond industry, most of it is gained through illegitimate means and none of it goes to the citizens of the country. Parents hope to send their children overseas so that they may get a semblance of a chance to succeed that is simply not present in Sierra Leone. The film connects to the acronym THE BOMB because it elaborates on many of the hardships facing Sierra Leone and Cambodia, and even the United States to a certain extent.

Using NationMaster.com to compare some statistics describing the economy of the United States and Cambodia, it becomes evident as to how much more advanced the United States is than the poor third world country. For example, Cambodia's GDP is around $39 billion, which sounds like an impressive amount, yet is overshadowed when compared to the US' staggering $13 trillion, 335 times that of Cambodia's. The GDP per capita of the two countries has a less pronounced difference, with Cambodia's being $2,700, and the United States' being $44,000. Still, the US' GDP per capita is 15 times that of Cambodia's, so there is still a large gap. However, GDP and GDP per capita cannot be used to identify a country's citizens' income, since it is only a measure of the value of the goods a country produces. Even so, when using World Bank income categories, Cambodia still ranks in low income, and the US ranks in high income.

Comparing health statistics between the two nations only further cements the gap between the two countries. In the United States, for example, the maternal death rate is 8 per 100,000, while in Cambodia, it is a marginally larger 440 per 100,000, 54 times more than the US. This unfortunate statistic may be the work of the fact that in Cambodia there are only .5 hospital beds per 1,000 people (while in the US there are 3.5 per 1,000) and only .16 physicians per 1,000 people (compared to 2.2 per 1,000 in the US). The US numbers do not seem that much more impressive, yet one must consider that the population of the US is much greater than that of Cambodia, leading to a larger aggregate number of hospital beds and physicians both. Another startling statistic is that while drug access in the US is 95%, it is an abysmal 0% in Cambodia. That means that while most of the US has access to life-saving pharmaceuticals, virtually no one in Cambodia has access to them. It is sobering to consider how many people die unnecessarily because they simply don't receive the necessary medicine to treat a condition that may even be over the counter in the US.

---