Unit 2 - Development Dynamics

Question 1

What are the 3 indicators by which development can be measured by?

Answer 1

Economic, social and political

Question 2

What are subsistence farmers?

Answer 2

Subsistence farmers are farmers who produce enough produce to feed themselves but not much more to sell

Question 3

What is GDP, what type of factor is it and what is it measured in?

Answer 3

• GDP is gross domestic product - It’s an economic factor
• It’s the total goods and services produced by a country in US$
• Measured in purchasing power parity (ppp) which will tell you what the same amount will buy you in different countries

Question 4

Name 2 other economic factors (other than GDP) and describe what they are

Answer 4

Poverty line
- The minimum amount of money required to meet someone’s basic needs
- The World Bank uses $1.90 per person per day

Measures of Inequality
- Shows how equally wealth is shared among the population
- It includes the percentage of GDP owned by the wealthiest 10% of the population and by the poorest 10%

Question 5

How do you work out GDP per capita?

Answer 5

Divide the country’s GDP by the country’s population

Question 6

Name and describe 2 examples of social indicators

Answer 6

Access to safe drinking water
- The percentage of the population with access to an improved water supply within 1km

Literacy rate
- The percentage of the population over the age of 15 who can read and write

Question 7

How is HDI calculated?

Answer 7

By using the averages of life expectancy, literacy rate, GDP per capita and average length of schooling

Question 8

How is corruption measured and what might invested money be used for in corrupt countries?

Answer 8

• The corruptions perceptions index was made to help investors work out where their money is safe
• It uses a scale from 0 to 100, the lower the score is, the more corrupt it is
• In corrupt countries, invested money might be used to bribe officials or to purchase weapons

Question 9

Define birth rate

Answer 9

Number of live births per 1,000 people per year

Question 10

Define death rate

Answer 10

Number of deaths per 1,000 people per year

Question 11

Define dependency ratio

Answer 11

• The number of people aged 0-14 and over 65 (outside working age) compared to the number of people who are between the ages 15-64 (working age) x 100
• The lower the ratio, the greater the number who work and are less dependent.

Question 12

Define fertility rate

Answer 12

Average number of births per woman

Question 13

Define infant mortality

Answer 13

The number of children per 1,000 live births who die before their first birthday

Question 14

Define maternal mortality

Answer 14

Number of mothers per 100,000 who die in childbirth

Question 15

What is the Brandt report and what did it say?

Answer 15

• In 1980, the Brandt report was published by the then German Chancellor, William Brandt who identified 2 groups of countries - HICs (global north) and LICs (global south)

Question 16

What is the ‘North-South Divide’ / ‘Development Gap’?

Answer 16

The inequalities between HICs and LICs / global north and global south

Question 17

How were MICs formed in Latin America?

Answer 17

• In the 1980s, rapid development took place in Latin America.
• This created MICs such as Brazil and Chile.
• Large reserves of raw materials in these countries encouraged investment and growth and their cities experienced great increase in population

Question 18

How were NICs formed in south-east Asia?

Answer 18

• In the 1990s, rapid development took place in countries of south-east Asia such as Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia.
• Growth was so aggressive that these countries became known as the ‘Asian tigers’. Most of this region is now called Newly Industrialising Countries / NICs

Question 19

China and India are referred to as ____

Answer 19

• The most rapid has been the industrialisation of China and India.
• They are referred to as Recently Industrialising Countries / RICs. Together with Brazil and Russia, they’re known as the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, China)

Question 20

What 2 things have stayed the same since 1980 and the Brandt report?

Answer 20

• USA’s GDP still remains far higher than the rest
• In 1980, the 10 poorest countries were in sub-Saharan Africa and this is still true

Question 21

What are the factors that are holding Malawi back?

Answer 21

It’s landlocked, it’s rurally isolated, it’s living with a changing climate, health problems

Question 22

Describe how being landlocked is holding Malawi back

Answer 22

Malawi has no coastline which means it doesn’t have a port to import or export goods
- Reaching the coast involves going to Nacala in Mozambique along one slow 800 km single track railway.
→ The line is narrow gauge which limits the speed and weight on each train.
- This is a slow, expensive process

Question 23

Describe how being rurally isolated is holding Malawi back

Answer 23

85% of Malawi’s population is rural and it has the highest percentage of rural population in the world
- Much of Malawi has poor infrastructure
- The roads are mainly dirt so it takes several hours to travel 20 km to local markets during the rainy season
- When they flood, farmers can be cut off
- Landlines services are slow so Malawi has started to use mobile technology
→ By 2019, Malawi had only 14,350 landlines (1 per 1,400 people) but 2.7 million internet users
- Mobile ownership is growing rapidly, from 1 million in 2007 to 10 million by 2019.

Question 24

How is living with a changing climate holding Malawi back?

Answer 24

Oxfam published a report named ‘Africa - up in smoke’ and it showed that climate change would affect Africa more than anywhere else, causing:
→ Water shortages as temperatures rise (increasing evaporation)
→ Food shortages caused by variable rainfall and increased drought
- Rainfall in Malawi has been much lower since 2000 compared to the twentieth century and the rainy season has been shorter
→ This means that rivers have dried up and crop yields have fallen
- However, when rains do arrive, they are intense - in 2012, heavy rains reduced Malawi’s maize harvest by 7% and 10,000 families were made homeless by flooding

Question 25

How do health problems hold Malawi back?

Answer 25

In Lilongwe (Malawi’s capital) water supplies become contaminated during the rainy season by surface run-off from built-up areas.
- Squatter settlements on the city’s edge have no sanitation or waste management.
- Rivers and local dams become contaminated with waste and bacteria which causes risk to human health
- Air quality is poor from dust, industrial smoke and exhaust from badly maintained lorries.
- Other health problems like typhoid, malaria and dengue fever remain serious

Covid 19 brought a crisis to Malawi
- Hospitals stretched to capacity as the hospital in Blantyre has only 80 beds
- The virus spread most in the cities, peaking in January 2021 with 1,300 cases daily