Development Dilemmas Flashcards
What is economic development?
What is human development?
Economic development is a measure of a country’s wealth and how it is generated.
Human development is a measure of a population’s access to material elements, such as wealth nutrition and education; which are described as the standard of living. Access to health and leisure are often referred to as quality of life.
What is meant by the term standard of living?
Standard of living: How much wealth a group of people has and the goods and services available to them. Life expectancy and literacy rate may also be taken into account.
What is meant by the term quality of life?
Quality of life is the level of well-being and enjoyment of life that a group of people have.
Name two indicators of economic development and explain what they are.
1) GDP - Gross domestic product is the total value of goods and services produced by a country in a year. It’s often divided by the population of that country to give GDP per capita.
2) PPP - Purchasing power parity adjusts income to take the cost of living in that country into account. For example $1 can buy a lot more is Sierra Leone than in the USA.
What do political indicators show?
Give three examples of political indicators.
Political indicators show what a government is likely to be doing for its country.
1) Is it well governed?
2) Is there free speech?
3) Is there corruption?
What is the HDI?
Which four indicators does it use?
The HDI, human development index is used by the United Nations to measure countries development across the world. It consists of a single figure between 0 and 1 per country, the higher the figure the better.
The HDI is calculated using four different indicators:
1) Life expectancy
2) Education - literacy
3) Education - average length of schooling
4) GDP per capita
Where are many of the lowest countries on the HDI located and what have they been involved in recently?
What is ranking on the HDI closely linked to and why?
Many of the lowest countries on the HDI are located in Africa and have also been involved in conflict.
Ranking on the HDI is closely linked to GDP, because it’s still a matter of money because the poorest countries are unable to afford health care or education.
Give six social indicators of development.
1) Birth rate
2) Number of people per doctor
3) Gender equality
4) Life expectancy
5) Literacy rate
6) Infant mortality
What is life expectancy?
What is infant mortality?
What is literacy rate?
Life expectancy is the average number of years a person can expect to live.
Infant mortality is the number per 1000 of live births that die before their first birthday.
Literacy rate is the percentage of the population, aged over 15, who can read and write.
What was the Brandt report?
The Brandt report highlighted the poverty of the developing world, and compared with the wealth of the rich countries.
The Brandt report identified the differences between two groups of countries in terms GDP and quality of life as the ‘North-South divide, or development gap.
Which two major groups did Brandt identify in his report?
1) HIC’s: High income countries which were identified as the global north because most of them were in the Northern hemisphere. This group consisted of the USA, Western Europe, Japan and Australasia.
2) LIC’s: Low income countries which were identified as the global south because most of them were in the Southern hemisphere. This group consisted of South and Central America, almost all of Africa and Asia.
What has changed since the Brandt report of 1980 to the current day? (3)
1) Rapid economic development took place in Latin America in the 1980’s which created a new group of countries known as MIC’s, middle income countries. This includes Brazil, Peru and Chile.
2) In the 1990’s rapid economic growth and industrialisation took place in South-east Asia, mainly due to the relocation of western TNC’s to these countries. These countries include: Hong Kong, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore, most of the region is now classified as NIC’s, newly industrialising countries.
3) China and India have rapidly industrialised also since the Brandt report of 1980 and are now referred to as RIC’s, rapidly industrialising countries.
What has stayed the same since the Brandt Report of 1980?
What are Brazil, Russia, China and India collectively known as?
In 1980 Brandt identified the world’s poorest countries as almost entirely Africa, this is still true today.
BRIC’s.
Developing country in Sub-Saharan Africa Case Study.
What political development has recently happened here?
Give three problems which the country faces presently?
Malawi
In June 2012 Malawi got a new president called Joyce Branda, she believes that Malawi needs to join a globalised world and that globalisation will bring investment and jobs to Malawi.
Problems
1) Increasing food prices.
2) Fuel shortages.
3) 1.2 million people in the country are facing hunger.
Give three possible barriers to development in Malawi in the future.
1) Malawi is landlocked so exportation and importation of goods is a slow and expensive process. Malawi’s government does not have the money to pay for transportation and communication networks or other problems like unreliable power supply and water shortages.
2) 20% of adults in Malawi have HIV/AIDS which is causing poverty among many Malawians. Those dying are mainly in their 20’s and 30’s, which is the most economically important age group. Healthcare is very expensive and many children are being made orphans and many families forced to live in poverty when the wage earner dies.
3) Malawi will likely only develop if it’s trade increases, Malawi’s main export is coffee beans. However due to tariffs imposed on roasted coffee beans entering the EU and USA, which suit big corporations like Costa, Malawi is forced to export raw coffee beans which are not worth as much.
