International Development Flashcards
(18 cards)
Development
Development is the process of something improving over time
Poverty
Extreme poverty is living close to $1 a day.
Poverty is a state or condition in which a person or community lacks the financial resources and essentials for a minimum standard of living.
Inequality
Inequality means extreme differences between poverty and wealth, as well as in peoples’ wellbeing and access to things like jobs, housing and education.
Development indicators
Development indicators are statistics that we use to gain an insight into the level of development of a country.
Economic indicators
To do with wealth
Social indicators
to do with healthcare and education
Technological indicators
to do with new technology
Composite indicators
a combination of several different indicators
Development is about…
Improving people’s lives
GDP stands for
Gross domestic product
What is GDP
The total value of goods and services a country provides in a year
Human development index (HDI)
A composite indicator of GDP, life expectancy and enrolment in education
GDP per capita (PPP)
GDP divided by the population of a country (per capita) and adjusted to take into account how much a dollar buys there (PPP purchasing power parity)
What do we use GDP for?
Most commonly, we use a country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) if we are trying to show how wealthy the country is.
GDP
GDP is short for Gross Domestic Product – it is the total value of all the goods and services produced by a country in a single year. That basically means it is the nation’s ‘income’ in a year. We usually express it in US dollars ($), so we can compare all countries easily without having to think about exchange rates.
GDP per person
GDP per person is a country’s Gross Domestic Product – it’s national income in one year – divided by its population. This effectively gives is a measure of the average wealth per person, and allows us to compare levels of wealth in countries with very different population sizes. Because it is an average figure, we must always remember that there will be some people who earn more than the average, and some people who earn less.
PPP
PPP stands for Purchasing Power Parity. Economists write this when they have adjusted a country’s GDP per person to reflect the cost of living in a country. Two countries might have the same GDP per person, and therefore appear to have the same levels of wealth, but if it much cheaper to buy the essentials for life in one country, the people there are effectively better off, and economists might boost the GDP per person figure to reflect this; if they do, they will write PPP in brackets beside the figure.
Problem with GDP and life expectancy
The problem with using GDP as a development indicator, is that it does not tell us about how healthy the people in the country are, whether they have access to clean water and whether they have a stable political system in place.
Using life expectancy is also problematic, because it does not account for how well-off a country is or how well educated its population is.
