Measuring and Defining Development

Question 1

Development

Answer 1

• Positive change
• Industrial and post-industrial societies with large economies are more developed
• Agricultural or subsistence societies with low economic output are less developed

Features of more developed countries

• High income per capita
• Low unemployment rates
• Better living standards
• High literacy rates
• High level of economic growth and security
• High levels of technology and infrastructure
• Stable/good government
• Examples: USA, UK, Canada, Germany, Italy

Features of less developed countries

• High levels of poverty
• Low capita per income
• Lack of capital
• High population levels
• Massive unemployment rate
• Low literacy and school enrolment rates
• Poorly developed institutions
• Examples: Afghanistan, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Ethiopia

Question 2

The Terminology Problem

Answer 2

• Never been a consensus over what ‘development’ actually means

1) First world, second world and third world

• First world = industrialised capitalist world
  ↳ USA, Western Europe, Japan, Aus/NZ
• Second world = industrialised communist world
  ↳ The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe
• Third World = rest of the world

2) Brandt’s North-South Divide

• Brandt line = imaginary division which has provided a rough way of dividing all of the countries in the world
• Rich north & poor south

3) World Bank’s Economic Classifications

• Divides countries according to GNI per capita
• LLEDCs/LEDCs = low income, less economically developed countries
  ↳ mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa
• NICs = newly industrialised countries
  ↳ lower middle income - mostly in Africa but includes India
  ↳ Upper middle income - Russia/Brazil
• MEDCs = more economically developed countries
  ↳ high income - UK/USA

Question 3

The BRIC Nations

Answer 3

• Brazil
• Russia
• India
• China
• Have a demographic and economic potential to rank among them worlds largest and most influential economies in the 21st century

Question 4

Asian Tiger Countries

Answer 4

• Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan
• Fuelled by exports and rapid industrialisation
• Have achieved high levels of economic growth since the 1960s
• Have a sharp focus on exports
• Education population
• High saving & growth rates (became rich very fast)
• Fast industrialisation between the early 1960s and 1990s
• Productive work force

Question 5

Paul Collier - Bottom Billion

Answer 5

• East Timor, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Many African Countries
• Caught in 4, sometimes interlocking traps
• Conflict trap
• Natural resource trap
• Being landlocked
• Poor governance
• Countries can help through aid, trade, security and government

Question 6

Eduardo Galeano - A 3rd World Perspective on Development

Answer 6

• Promise of politicians that the third world will become like the first world
• If poor countries reached the levels of production. and waste of the rich countries, our planet would die
• Imposter culture: we want all the branded expensive things
• Western notion of development is that it assumed countries that are more economically developed are better
  ↳ using terms such as ‘undeveloped’ implies that these countries are inferior and need help, justifying intervention when this may not be wanted

Criticisms Galeano makes of ‘Western’ nations of development

• Ethnocentric: assumes LEDCs should develop in the same way as Western countries develop
• Too focused on industrialisation/economic growth but these don’t necessarily lead to social development
• Economic development can bring problems for developing countries eg population, urbanisation (slums)
• Economically developed countries have several problems too: inequality, individualisation, anomie, obesity, depression etc

Question 7

Economic Indicators of Development - GDP

Answer 7

• Gross National Product (GNP) and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) are two economic indicators
• GDP = total economic value of goods and services produced within the borders of a country in the course of a year and available for consumption in the market place
• GNP = same as above but includes the value of all services produced at home and abroad

Advantages:

• These figured provide a snapshot of which countries need to be traveled with financial aid
• GDP figures make it easy to measure the impact of social policies and certain events on economic growth

Disadvantages

• Inconsistencies in collecting data
• Neglects ‘illegal’ economies

Question 8

Social Indicators of Development

Answer 8

• Human Development Index (HDI)
• Millennium Development Goals
• Sustainable development goals
• Gini Coefficient
• Gross National Happiness (GNI)
• Gender Inequality Index (GI)
• Global Peace Index

Question 9

Human Development Index

Answer 9

• The UN use the HDI as a summary measure for assessing long-term progress
  ↳ three basic dimensions: a long and healthy life, access to knowledge and a decent standard of living
• Measures health (life expectancy at birth), education (average number years of adult education they have received & number of expected years of education children attending school can expect), to measure standard of living (Gross National Income per capita)

Advantages

• A more human centred approach
  ↳ concerned more with actual human welfare than just economics
• Enables aid to be targeted more effectively

Disadvantages

• Reflects long changes ie life expectancy and may not respond to recent short-term changes

Question 10

The Millennium Development Goals

Answer 10

• Eight goals to be achieved by 2015. that respond to the worlds main development challenges
• Drawn from the actions and targets contained in the Millennium Declaration that was adopted by 189 nations during the UN Millennium Summit in September 2000
• The 8 MDGs break down into 21 quantifiable targets measured by 60 indicators
• The 8 Goals: eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality and empower women, reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, combat HIV/AIDs, Malaria and Other Diseases, ensure environmental stability, global partnership for development

Advantages

• World poverty has reduced by half
• Billions of people will benefit from the global economy in a more sustainable environment

Problems

• Is it measurable? How do you measure it?
• Impossible to eradicate extreme poverty/hunger

Question 11

Sustainable Development Goals

Answer 11

• 17 of them: 1) no poverty 2) zero hunger 3) good health and well-being 4) quality education 5) gender equality
• Published by the United Nations in 1987
• Developed guiding principles for sustainable development as it is generally understood today
• Critical global environmental problems were primarily the result of enormous poverty of the South and the non-sustainable patterns of consumption and production in the North

Question 12

The ‘Gini Coefficient’

Answer 12

• Intended to represent income inequalities within a nation or social group
• Compares income/wealth distribution of a population to a perfectly equal distribution
• Strengths: Representative of a population
• Limitations: Unreliable as it’s prone to random errors, low validity as it’s dependent on sample size

Question 13

Gross National Happiness

Answer 13

• Measures the well-being of a society considering healthy development of material and spiritual aspects as a whole

4 Pillars of Gross National Happiness

• Ecological sustainability
• Preservation and promotion of a free and resilient culture
• Good governance and equality before the law
• Sustainable and equitable socio-economic development

Strengths:

• All indicators have the same weight and it gives a complementary measure of wellbeing to economic growth
• The surveys are understandable for the majority of the population

Limitations:

• An excessively long survey can cause inaccurate results and the questionnaires may not collect all possible answers
• The conception of happiness is very subjective

Question 14

Gender Inequality Index

Answer 14

• Provides insights into gender disparities
• Considers statistics for a country

Question 15

Global Peace Index

Answer 15

• Reveals how much peace there is in the world on average
• Measures negative peace

Uses 3 Thematic Domains:

• Level of societal safety and security
• The extent of ongoing domestic and international conflict
• The degree of militarisation

Strengths:

• Data isn’t biased
• Shows a clear correlation between sustained peacefulness in a country and that countries level of development
• Covers a lot of indicators: you get a certain level of insight into the levels of peacefulness and violence

Limitations:

• Data may not be 100% valid: the difference in the way countries are recorded especially in war zones may mean conflicts and deaths are missing from the data