The US has mandated IPv6 support for federal contracts since 2009, although they don't get involved outside of those directly providing services to the government itself. They now have plans to go IPv6-only, and eliminate the use of legacy IP within the federal government.
Allocation of legacy address space was always based on first come first served, so developed countries got the lions share of address space and left developing countries with scraps. This creates a severe inequality, and holds developing countries back. This is also why India and China are leading, as they have a huge disparity between their population and the number of legacy addresses available.