Development Dilemmas

Question 1

What is economic development?

What is human development?

Answer 1

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.

Question 2

What is meant by the term standard of living?

Answer 2

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.

Question 3

What is meant by the term quality of life?

Answer 3

Quality of life is the level of well-being and enjoyment of life that a group of people have.

Question 4

Name two indicators of economic development and explain what they are.

Answer 4

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.

Question 5

What do political indicators show?

Give three examples of political indicators.

Answer 5

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?

Question 6

What is the HDI?

Which four indicators does it use?

Answer 6

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

Question 7

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?

Answer 7

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.

Question 8

Give six social indicators of development.

Answer 8

1) Birth rate
2) Number of people per doctor
3) Gender equality
4) Life expectancy
5) Literacy rate
6) Infant mortality

Question 9

What is life expectancy?
What is infant mortality?
What is literacy rate?

Answer 9

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.

Question 10

What was the Brandt report?

Answer 10

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.

Question 11

Which two major groups did Brandt identify in his report?

Answer 11

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.

Question 12

What has changed since the Brandt report of 1980 to the current day? (3)

Answer 12

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.

Question 13

What has stayed the same since the Brandt Report of 1980?

What are Brazil, Russia, China and India collectively known as?

Answer 13

In 1980 Brandt identified the world’s poorest countries as almost entirely Africa, this is still true today.
BRIC’s.

Question 14

Developing country in Sub-Saharan Africa Case Study.
What political development has recently happened here?
Give three problems which the country faces presently?

Answer 14

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.

Question 15

Give three possible barriers to development in Malawi in the future.

Answer 15

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.

Question 16

What are the five stages of development in Rostow’s Model?

Answer 16

1) Traditional society - Most people work in agriculture but only consume what they produce; this is a subsistence economy.
2) Pre-conditions for take-off - shift from farming to manufacturing, trade increases profits which are invested into new industries and infrastructure.
3) Take off - growth is rapid, requires profits from overseas trade. Investment and technology create new manufacturing industries.
4) Drive to maturity - period of growth, technology is used throughout the economy, industries produce consumer goods.
5) Age of high mass consumption - consumers enjoy a wide range of goods. Societies choose whether to spend money on military strength, education and welfare or on luxuries for the wealthy.

Question 17

What did Rostow’s theory become known as and why?

Answer 17

Rostow’s theory became known as modernisation theory because he thought it was a way to ‘modernise’, like the world’s developing countries.

Question 18

What was Frank’s dependency theory?

What happens in Frank’s theory?

Answer 18

Frank believed that development was about two types of global region - core and periphery. The core represents the developed powerful nations of the world and the periphery consists of other areas which produce raw materials to sell to the core, so the periphery depends on the core for its market.

In Frank’s theory, low-value raw materials are traded between the periphery and the core. The core processes these into higher value products, and becomes wealthy.

Question 19

What did Frank believe about development contrary to Rostow?

Answer 19

1) Frank believed that historical trade was what had made countries poor in the first place.
2) He believed that poorer countries aren’t primitive versions of wealthier ones , but are weaker members of a global economy whose rules are decided by the wealthy.

Question 20

Give three facts about India which are representative of its recent growth?

What is the problem with wealth in India?
Name the wealthiest and poorest states.

Answer 20

1) Its population is the world’s second largest, 1.2 billion in 2012.
2) Its workforce is 500 million people.
3) Its economy is growing at an average of 7% per year.
Wealth in India is not evenly shared or distributed.
Wealthiest: Maharashtra
Poorest: Bihar

Question 21

Where has much of India’s economic growth been?

How have these regions developed into a core region?

Answer 21

Much of India’s economic growth has been around its ports and cities.
As this growth happens, people migrate to these place for jobs. Then as they earn money, they spend it, boosting demand for housing and services, which creates more jobs. This leads to an upward spiral called the multiplier effect, over time this effect increases and a whole region develops called a core region.

Question 22

What makes Maharashtra India’s richest core region?

Where has Maharashtra’s economic growth come from? (4)

Answer 22

It has the largest GDP and contains India’s largest city, Mumbai

Question 23

Why is Bihar, the rural periphery struggling to develop? (4)

Answer 23

1) Although 100 million people live in Bihar, it gets little investment because people struggle to pay for basic services.
2) Bihar is a caste-based society, those in the higher castes are literate and wealthy, whereas almost all of those in the lower castes are illiterate.
3) School attendance in Bihar is poor and overall, literacy in Bihar is around 47%.
4) Most people in Bihar work as low-wage labourers in agriculture.

Question 24

Explain the cycle of poverty in the rural periphery. (4)

Answer 24

1) Most farmers in the rural periphery are subsistence farmers.
2) They have little or no surplus farm produce.
3) So they have little or no income because they are unable to sell their produce because they must eat almost all if not all of their produce.
4) Therefore they are not able to invest in land improvement, machinery or materials.

So they become trapped in the cycle of poverty.

Question 25

Give a named example of bottom up development and explain what this has done and how families have gained from this in four main ways.

Answer 25

ASTRA development project in India has greatly helped families by listening to their problems and needs. They realised that for most rural families, the main problem is their daily routine being very time consuming. So they have installed intermediate technologies such as biogas generators which are used for cooking by day and powering an electricity generator at night.
Families gain because:
1) less time is spent collect fuelwood.
2) there is no ash so less time is pent cleaning.
3) heat is instant so less time is spent cooking.
4) there is less smoke and fewer cases of lung disease.

Question 26

Explain how bottom up development works.

Answer 26

In bottom-up development, experts work with communities to identify their real needs. This gives local people control in improving their lives and experts are able to assist them with the progress.

Question 27

Explain how top-down development works. (4)

Answer 27

1) Top-down development involves decision makers looking at the bigger picture to identify needs or opportunities e.g. establish national energy sources or food security.
2) Experts help to plan the changes.
3) Local people are informed about the plans but have no say in whether they will happen or not.
4) The argument is that all people benefit from a ‘trickle-down’ process, where jobs and therefore wealth ‘trickle down’ to the poor.

Question 28

Give a named example one smaller top-down project.

What have been the impacts of the project? (4)

Answer 28

The ‘Green revolution’ is an example of a top-down project, for instance offering higher yielding rice plants to rural communities in India. The plants which are shorter, grow quicker and produce more grain were developed by scientists of TNC’s; thanks to these plants India now exports rice.

1) The crops are infertile so farmers have to buy new crops every year.
2) The seeds are high yielding, but they also need irrigation water, fertilisers and pesticides which only larger wealthier farmers can afford
3) Crop yields are higher, so income has risen - for the wealthy.
4) The over-use of chemicals to control pests, has reduced the resistance to pesticides.

Question 29

Give a named case study of one large top-down project, why was it built?
Explain which two groups of people are benefiting from the dam.

Answer 29

The Sardar Sarovar Dam along the Narmada river in India, when completed it will provide water all year round to areas that are suffering from drought.
Groups benefiting from the dam:
1) People in India’s cities, the dam is multi-purpose, it provide 3.5 billion litres of drinking water a day and 1450 megawatts of hydroelectric power.
2) Farmers in western India. A series of canals distribute water to other states in India, when complete they will irrigate 1.8 million hectares of farmland in the driest areas of Gujarat, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh suffer from drought and lose £20 billion in farm production each year.

Question 30

Explain which four groups are losing out from The Sardar Sarovar dam.

Answer 30

1) Local residents - 234 villages have been drowned so far, forcing 320,000 people out of their homes, few of the villages are able to afford the electricity produces by the dam.
2) Local farmers - good quality farmland has been submerged. Those benefitting from irrigation will lose out from increased soil salinity, making the soil less useable. Damming the river means that fertile soil normally deposited on flood plains each year will be lost.
3) Western India - Religious and historic sites have been flooded by the dam.
4) People downstream - the area has a history of earthquake activity; it is believed that the weight of large dams can trigger earthquakes, which could destroy the dam and cause massive loss of life.