(FORTUNE Magazine) – While most of the industrialized world rouses from recent economic slumber, many developing nations are long awake and working overtime.

With their growing incomes, consumers in the Pacific Rim and Eastern Europe are beginning to flex their buying muscle. To give you a better view of the new global consumer, we took snapshots of the economic landscape and assembled profiles of spending patterns around the globe. The following charts and tables compare the world's regions by several significant indicators. They include industrial measures, such as steel use, as well as consumer indicators, such as airline passenger miles -- and just for fun, some unusual gauges, such as consumption of Coca-Cola or chocolate. Data are the latest available for worldwide comparison.

The Americas: Northern maturity meets Southern youth. . . Latin America's youth holds the region's brightest opportunity and its biggest challenge. Its numerous teenagers are voracious consumers of Coke and MTV, naturally, and many will be better educated than their elders. But many others are poor, especially in Brazil. Demand for consumer goods is increasing, especially in countries such as Mexico and Chile that are reforming their economies. But relative to car crazy norteamericanos, Latinos are still in the slow lane. South Americans spend a far greater segment of their income on food, a figure that should decrease with prosperity.

Eastern Europe seeks to match the West's quality of life. . . The populations of both Europes are well educated, with literacy rates over 95%. But Eastern Europeans don't have as many TVs as their Western comrades, which may explain why they have one of the highest rates of newspaper circulation in the world. The Easterners are catching up in areas of communications where they still trail. Sales of central office telephone equipment have risen about 14% since 1987. Steel consumption is falling as the East sheds some of its least efficient, most environmentally hostile capacity. Hard currency is scarce, making imports hard to come by. As expected since the fall of communism, the East leads the world in privatization of state-owned enterprises. Housing costs are low, but you get what you pay for.

Africa struggles to eat; the Middle East presses development. . . Africa doesn't consume much and won't for quite a while. People under age 14 account for over 40% of the population. Africans spend an enormous proportion of their small incomes on food, which eats up 38% of total consumption, vs. 10% in the U.S. Its human development index, a measure of general well-being, is the world's lowest. The popular image of the Middle East as rolling in wealth was never true, and per capita income has dipped with oil prices. But development continues, as evidenced by increasing consumption of industrial products such as steel and energy.

The Asian Century is dawning: youth, affluence, and technology. Asia sports the world's highest economic growth rates. Louis Tong, a managing director at SRG China, a Hong Kong market research firm, illustrates: ''In the Seventies the most sought after items in China were a sewing machine, a bicycle, and an electric fan. In the Eighties, Chinese were looking for a TV, a refrigerator, and a washing machine. In the Nineties they want a VCR, a $ motorcycle, and a telephone.'' Analysts suspect that the official GDP figures for China, given here, underestimate its wealth. Asia's growth is reflected in the region's fast-rising energy use and purchases of communications gear.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE CREDIT: FORTUNE CHARTS/COPYRIGHT 1993 CAPTION: POPULATION GNP FOR YOUTH, LOOK SOUTH HOW INCOME IS ALLOCATED INDUSTRIAL CONSUMPTION TRANSPORTATION HOW PEOPLE SPEND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT INDEX COCA-COLA CONSUMPTION TOP FIVE COMPUTER USERS COMMUNICATION BOTH EUROPES GET OLDER PACE OF PRIVATIZATION EMERGING MARKETS FOR U.S. COMPANIES TOP TEN CHOCOLATE MARKETS THE YOUNGEST PLACES ON EARTH A NEED FOR DOCTORS SPACE IS AT A PREMIUM GDP GROWTH VIM IN THE PACIFIC RIM