Defining and Measuring Development

Defining and Measuring Development

• Wealth depends on more than just what is produced; how and where it's produced matters.
• Development involves progress in a nation's technology, production, and socioeconomic welfare.
• Gross National Product (GNP) is the total value of officially recorded goods and services produced by a country's citizens and corporations in a year, both inside and outside the nation.
• Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the total value of officially recorded goods and services produced by citizens and corporations of a country in a year, but only within the nation's borders.
• Gross National Income (GNI) calculates the monetary worth of production within a country plus income from investments outside the country.
• Economists use per capita GNI (GNI divided by the population) to standardize data.

Limitations of GNI

• GNI is often unevenly distributed within a population, concentrated at the top.
• GNI measures output but does not account for environmental damage from resource depletion or pollution.
• GNI can be negatively affected by beneficial changes like increased use of energy-saving devices.

GNI Examples

• Norway had the world's highest GNI as of 2015, with $103,630 per person, due to oil income and a small population (5.2 million).
• Qatar has a GNI of $92,000 with a total of 2.8 million citizens and lots of oil, wealth concentrated in the top 1%.

Development

• Improving material conditions through diffusion of knowledge and technology.
• More Developed Country (MDC) has progressed relatively far on the development continuum.
• Less Developed Country (LDC) is in an earlier stage of development.
• Developing increases access to food, shelter, health, and protection
• Developing improves levels of living, including incomes, jobs and education
• Developing expands available economic and social choices

Measuring Development

• United Nations Development Program Overview 2005
• Gross Domestic Product (GDP) which covers Types of Work - Economic Sectors)
• Social Indicators cover Education and Literacy and Health and Welfare
• Demographic Indicators cover Life Expectancy (37 - 80 years)
• Gross National Product
• Literacy rate- the percentage of a country’s people who can read and write.

Human Development Index (HDI)

• HDI is used by the UN to classify countries' development based on economic, social, and demographic factors.
• The economic factor is a country's GDP per capita.
• The social factors are literacy rate and the amount of education.
• The demographic factor is life expectancy.

Rostow's Modernization Model

• Designed to explain how modern countries developed.
• Assumes all countries can develop to the same level, following the same path.
• Stage 1: Traditional society with subsistence farming, rigid social structure, and low technology.
• Stage 2: Preconditions for takeoff with new leadership promoting flexibility, openness, and diversification.
• Stage 3: Takeoff with industrial revolution, sustained growth, urbanization, and mass production.
• Stage 4: Drive to maturity with diffusion of technology, industrial specialization, and international trade. Modernization occurs and population growth slows.
• Stage 5: High mass consumption with high incomes, widespread production, and a dominant service sector.
• Referred to as the "ladder of development," it remains influential despite criticisms.

American History in Rostow's Model

• Stage 1: Jamestown and Plymouth, survival was the main focus.
• Stage 2: Diversified agriculture and trade in the American colonies (tobacco, cotton, etc.).
• Stage 3: The American Industrial Revolution after 1820.
• Stage 4: America in the late 1800s-early 1900s.
• Stage 5: America from the Roaring Twenties to the present.

Problems with Rostow's Model

• Uneven distribution of resources leaves some countries with little to sell.
• Stagnation of the world market limits purchasing power.
• Can lead to increased dependence on Most Developed Countries
• The World Trade Organization (WTO) was founded to promote international trade by removing barriers.

How Geography Affects Development

• Context affects development on local, state, regional, and global scales.
• European colonialism created dependencies, leading to neocolonialism, where economies are still controlled by major powers.
• Structuralist theory views economic disparities as a result of historical power relations.
• Wealthy European countries dominated poorer African nations, economically influencing them due to property right and loans.

Barriers to Economic Development

• High infant/child mortality due to malnutrition, short life expectancy, lack of education, and views on gender.
• Countries with a population mean of around 15 years old have too many people dying young due lack of care.
• Lack of education, especially for girls, limits their potential and societal roles.
• Girls can become victims of trafficking, leading to modern slavery and forced labor.

Foreign Debt as a Barrier

• Former colonies took structural adjustment loans with conditions like privatization, trade liberalization, and reduced tariffs.
• Debt forces nations to spend money on repayment rather than citizens, leading to bankruptcy.

IMF Policies & Neoliberalism

• The International Monetary Fund (IMF), composed largely of European banks, pushed for changes favoring European traders.
• Structural adjustment loans were part of neoliberalism, arguing against government interference, which impacted the state.
• Neoliberalism can lead to economic crises when a country's goods lose value.

Disease as a Barrier

• Disease is a barrier to Development where the most damaging disease is malaria.
• Malaria is a vectored disease (spread from one person to another via an intermediate host) with the intermediate host being the mosquito.
• Malaria exists only in warm, moist climates
• Malaria is carried in mosquitoes saliva and kills 150,000 children per month or about 2 million a year, most under the age of 5

Strategies to fight Malaria

• Common in Africa, South America, India, Southeast Asia, and China.
• DDT was used to wipe out mosquitoes, but its use was discontinued when possible links to cancer were discovered.
• Future tactics include the use of a genetically engineered mosquitoes to help prevent the spread of the disease
• Malaria is rumored to have been the cause of death of Alexander the Great and was greatly feared by British and American mariners on the African coast.

Political Instability as a Barrier

• Political instability makes it difficult to establish control over low-income or war-torn nations (e.g., Afghanistan).
• Former colonial societies often have indigenous elites in charge which leads to Military dictatorships
• Poverty leads to civil war and people will turn to those who promise a birhter tomorrow - the taliban in Afghanistan.

Costs of Economic Development

• Any kind of changes lead to a ripple effect within the nation and beyond including Agriculture and Industrialisation

Agriculture

• Agriculture in periphery or semi periphery countries is usually limited to either a major agricultural conglomerate or by small farmers who focus on personal consumption (subsistence farming).
• When conglomerates run agriculture, the food is produced for trade in another market, not for the local population.
• Small Farmers in agriculture lack funds for fertilizer and education on soil conversation that has led to desertification.
• In the last 50 years, 270,000 square miles of African farming and grazing land has succumbed to desertification.

Ripple Effects of Economic Development

• Industrial production can lead to air and water pollution
• Agricultural Production leads to herbicides and pesticides in water
• Increased tourism increases the strain on infrastructure and alters the local culture.

Industrialization

• Areas in periphery or semi-periphery need to construct conditions that will attrack manufacturers
• Foreign Nations create export processing zones with Special Tax advantages
• Examples of such processing zones include the Maquiladoras if mexico and the special economic zones of china.
• NAFTA allows for eliminating some border trade and allows of the movement of goods and services inside north america

Tourism

• Tourism brings wealth and employment to a nation, but the effect is limited to those directly or nearly directly involved.
• Tourism requires a substantial investment on the part of the host country, ranging from hospitals and hotels to airports. This is at the expense of other possible building projects that might have helped the local populatio
• Culture is often adapted to appeal to tourists, breeding resentment for this “demonstration effect”.
• Finally a nation that is over reliant on tourism is vulnerable to changes in the world environment, shifting tourism to other locations.

Influence on development

• Development can lead to greater political and or economic power in a state.
• Periphery and Colonial Countries have seen greater differences after colonial control left Sub Saharan Cities a mess.
• In comparison to the countryside, many cities, even with the wealth disparity, are like islands of development within a state.

Role Of Government in Developemnt

• Government often play a role in the disparity
• Government often decides where wealth is produced by tariffs, land ownership, setting brokering trade deals, and establishing environmental regulations.
• Trade organizations or other groups, can also greatly improve development

Islands of development

• Occur when a government or corporation builds up and concentrates economic development in a city or smal region.
• Colonial Countries who move their Capitals inland, have greater show of independence
• Corporations also do this, such as when. ELF and Shell Oil companies turned Port Gentile in Gabon into an "oil city”, building housing, roads, and stores while providing much of the employment for the area.

Government Organisations

• Development can be helped by independent organisations.
• Microcredit Programs support development of small businesses with high re-payment rates.
• These programs often give women more fiscal power and help lower levels of malnourishment as women are able to care for themselves.
• Programmes are less successful in areas with high mortality, excessive corruption, natural disasters and High Fertility Rates.