1. Measuring development Flashcards
What is the difference between GDP and GNI per capita?
GDP measures the total value of all goods and services produced within a country’s borders over a specific period, typically a year or a quarter.
GNI is the total domestic and foreign value added claimed by a country’s residents without making deductions for depreciation (or wearing out) of the domestic capital stock.
Why do we draw this key distinction in development economics?
Because GDP per capita is most commonly used however the World Bank uses GNI
What do we mean when we talk about development?
A multidimensional process involving major changes in social structures, popular attitudes and national institutions as well s the acceleration of economic growth, the reduction of inequality and the eradication of poverty
How do we make GNI and/or GDP figures internationally comparable?
- The Atlas Method
- The Purchasing power parity method
What is the atlas method?
A three-year moving average of exchange rates adjusted for differences in inflation
Why can we not use regular exchange rates to compare countries GNI/GDP?
Official exchange rates may be too volatile (and subject to manipulation)
Why is the atlas method commonly used?
Weak checks and balances on political power mean that the elite can decide the ER which results in two ER, one favourable to those trying to buy things in US dollars and the market ER which is often far lower which sets up the opportunity for arbitrage. The averages can amend this.
What is the weakness of the atlas method?
It misses a lot of the nuances of the country:
- Reliance on exchange rates
- Doesn’t account for PP
- Ignores non-market activities
What is the purchasing power parity method?
It compares a basket of goods in one country vs that same basket of goods in another country. Purchasing Power Parity is the number of units of a foreign country’s currency required to purchase the quantity of goods and services in the local developing country market as $1 would buy in the United State
Why is the PPP method often seen as better?
Accounts for non-tradeable goods and differences in the cost of living between countries.
What are non-tradable goods?
Goods that don’t operate in markets that impact the exchange rate
Why do we use other metrics than income to measure wealth and what are some of them?
Because there are several notable exceptions notably in resource rich countries. There is no alternative to relying on other non-income indicators, whether single-dimensional such as years of healthy life, or multidimensional incorporating at least health and education along with wealth
How can you calculate GDP from GNI?
Thus, GNI comprises GDP plus the difference between the income residents receive from abroad for factor services (labour and capital) less payments made to nonresidents who contribute to the domestic economy
How do income disparities differ between developed and developing countries when accounting for PPP?
Income gaps between developed and developing nations tend to be less when PPP is used. The most important reason is that real wages are lower in developing countries, which makes the price of (low-skill) services cheaper in real terms
What are some of the limitations of GNI?
There are other limitations of GNI (including PPP) calculations as measures of economic performance and welfare, including the lack of accounting for environmental losses to the prevalence of nonmonetary transactions, distributional concerns, and other capabilities
Why is there often large differences between exchange rates and PPP ER?
In many low income countries, people don’t partake in markets, they use non-tradable goods
What is Amartya Sen’s “Capability” approach?
Poor/ nonpoor is not about what a person has, it’s a person’s capability to function. Such as, who a person is or what they do, what they can be. What you can do with what you have. How functioning and capable they are
What is development in Sen’s eyes?
The expansion of people’s capabilities: Learn to read for example
What are some other factors that Sen encourages us to consider?
Health, Disability, Social exclusion, environmental conditions
What is the HDI?
The current HDI formulation ranks each country on a scale of 0 (lowest human development) to 1 (highest human development) based on three goals or end products of development
How is the HDI measured?
- A long and healthy life as measured by life expectancy at birth
- Knowledge as measured by a combination of average schooling attained by adults and expected years of schooling for school-age children
- Decent standard of living as measured by real per capita gross domestic income adjusted for the differing Purchasing Power Parity of each country’s currency to reflect cost of living and for the assumption of diminishing marginal utility of income.
What are the three key components of the HDI and how are they weighted in the equation?
- Health
- Knowledge/ Education
- Income
They are all weighted equally
What type of mean does the HDI use and why?
Uses a geometric mean as an arithmetic mean assumes perfect substitutability across income, health and education whereas a geometric mean ensures that poor performance in any dimension directly affects the overall index.
How did the UNDP bracket countries based on the HDI?
in 2018 the HDI classified countries in four groups: low human development (0.0 to 0.549), medium human development (0.550 to 0.699), high human development (0.700 to 0.799), and very high human development (0.80 to 1.0)
What are some examples of countries that perform worse on HDI than their income would predict?
Botswana, China, Egypt, Chad, Turkey, Guatemala, South Africa, Gabon, Côte d’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Pakistan, and the United Arab Emirates
What are some examples of countries that perform better on HDI than their income would predict?
Chile, Bangladesh, Cuba, Sri Lanka, Kenya, and Madagascar
How does HDI represent an improvement over GNI in calculating growth statistics?
By combining social and economic data, the HDI allows nations to take a broader measure of their development performance, both relatively and absolutely
What are some criticisms of the HDI?
There are some significant criticisms of the NDHI. For example, broadly, by adding some non-income indicators, but omitting others, it could lead to attention shifting from areas such as legal rights to education and health, or income. Thus some areas could receive even less attention than they would have otherwise. A specific criticism that has been raised is that expected educational attainment is difficult to forecast, particularly in low- and lower-middle-income countries, and could lead to an overly optimistic view, resulting in too little attention to education quality improvements.
What is the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI)?
Evaluates multidimensional poverty through the same factors as the HDI (Health, Education, Wealth/ Living standards) but at the individual level. It takes into account that there are negative interaction effects when people have multiple deprivations
What group of countries does the MPI cover?
110 of the poorest countries in the world
What is the main drawback of the MPI?
It requires survey data on the individual level, may be very outdated as well as difficult and expensive to collect
What is health broken down into under the MPI?
Nutrition and child mortality
When is a household said to be deprived in nutrition?
A household is designated as deprived in nutrition if there is a child who is either stunted or underweight; for family members aged 15 and older, body mass index (BMI) cutoffs are the indicators for the nutrition dimension.
When is a household said to be deprived in child mortality?
A child under 18 has died in the household in the five-year period proceeding the survey
What is education poverty broken down into?
Years of school and school attendance
When is a household said to be deprived in years of school?
No household member of at least 10 years old has completed six years of schooling (primary school)
When is a household said to be deprived in school attendance?
Any school aged child is not attending school up to the age at which they would complete 8th grade
What is living standards poverty broken down into?
Cooking fuel
Sanitation
Drinking water
Electricity
Housing
Assets
How is the weighting in the MPI?
Same as HDI, 1/3 for each of Health, wealth and education
What is unconditional convergence?
The tendency for per capita income to grow faster in lower-income countries so that they catch up over time. Evidence is weak.
What is conditional convergence?
When countries are hypothesised to not converge in all cases but other things being equal. A country’s per capita income will instead converge to a country-specific level in the long-run
What kind of relationship would we anticipate if we were expecting unconditional convergence?
We would expect to have a negative relationship between wealth and the growth rate, not really reflected in the data
