Closing The Development Gap Flashcards
What is development?
The improvement of quality of life of a country’s population.
What’s quality of life?
Level of happiness, wellbeing or contentment, resulting from the way of living.
Includes social, economic, cultural, political, demographic and environmental aspects.
What can the development gap be?
Between countries - 2015 people in Luxembourg has incomes of $105,000 per year compared with only $220 in South Sudan.
Within countries - chinas coastal cities incomes per capita are over $10,000 whereas in the rural east they are under $2000.
How can be levels of development be measured?
Single indicators
Composite indicators
What are single indicators?
They measure one variable (e.g. Life expectancy, GDP per capita)
They’re easy to use and understand, but may not given an accurate representation of development (aren’t very comprehensive).
What are composite indicators?
Combine more than one variable into a single measure.
E.g. HDI, GII
What are economic single indicators?
Gross national income (GNI)
Gross national product (GDP)
Income per capita
Purchasing power parity (PPP)
What are economic indicators?
These qualify well-being in terms of real income
What is GNI?
The value of goods and services earned by a country (including overseas earnings), formerly known as gross national product (GNP).
Both are good indicators of wealth (especially in HICs, which earn a great deal of income from overseas).
What is GDP?
Measures output produced by country’s factors of production wherever located.
The same as GNI, but excluding foreign earnings.
What is income per capita?
The mean income of a group of people.
Misleading where there is high income inequality, since very high incomes pull up.
May be the best single indicator of development since high income is often needed to raise aspects of QOL
What is PPP?
Relates average earnings to local prices and what they will buy.
This is the spending power within a country, and reflects the local costs of living.
What are economic composite indicators?
Economic sector balance
