Development is essential to the growth and advancement of the human culture. Development allows societies to advance into a state where there isn't a struggle to stay alive. It improves the education of a people, lowers death rates, and lowers birth rates. Development gives people sustainable access to sanitary conditions and clean drinking water. Throughout the world, there are many areas that need great improving. In many of these areas famine, drought, disease, and unsanitary conditions are a problem of everyday life. Life expectancy seems to illustrate the level of development in a country fairly well. In Rwanda, the life expectancy in 2009 was estimated at 51 years. This number is extremely frightening because in America, people at the age of 51 are generally still working and involved in all the aspects of their daily life with few restrictions. Typically, a high school student will have a parent at the age of 50 or above, but in Africa this age would represent an elder who may have to be looked after by his or her grandchildren. There are other statistics which can be equally frightening to the people living in developed countries. Improved sanitary conditions, which are conditions where everything is at a reasonably sanitary levels, are generally taken for granted throughout the core countries. In rural Subsaharan Africa 24% of the population have access to improved sanitation. In urban Subsaharan Africa, only 42% of the population have access to improved sanitary conditions. This means that the other 76% of rural subsaharan Africa is subjected to unsanitary and infectious areas which leaves them very likely to contract a disease. Development is necessary if humans want to thrive instead of struggling to survive.