Development

Development

What is development ?

Development means positive change that makes things better. It usually means that people’s standard of living and quality of life will improve.

But what is  ‘standard of living’ and ‘quality of life’?

        Standard of living measures only income/ wealth. It is a measure of economic development.

        Quality of life takes into consideration other aspects like health and  education -  but also includes income.

How do we measure development ?

We can measure changes in the standard of living and in the quality of life 
        Remember : standard of living = levels of income/wealth.  

Not all countries have the same levels of wealth ( richesse ).

Different countries have different standards of living. This means that are different levels of economic development.
        These differences mean that there is a development gap

What is the development gap ?

The development gap is the difference in standard of living between the richest and poorest countries in the world. 

We measure the richest countries.

These figures show total GDP   -  Gross Domestic Product

        GDP – total value of goods and services produced by a country  in one year (in US$)

Another way to measure the total wealth of a country is to calculate the GNI (gross national income)

        GNI - total value of goods and services produced by a country plus additional money from trade with other countries and investments overseas ( d'outre mer ).

Why is total wealth not always the best way of measuring development ?

• 
  It doesn’t take into account the size of a country’s population 

• It can hide differences within a country (some people are very rich, some are very poor; some parts of a country can be very rich and some very poor)

• It only considers ‘standard of living’ (an economic measurement) – not quality of life

Rather than using total wealth – GDP or GNI – we divide these figures by the number of people living in a country

        This gives us    GDP per capita ( par personne )

                                    GNI per capita

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*subsistence farming – when farmers grow enough food for them and their families to survivebut not enough to trade

* informal sectors – sectors of the economy where workers do not declare their employment and do not pay taxes (eg. street vendors, many agricultural workers such as fruit pickers)

Most LICs and lower MICs are found in south Asia and particularly sub-Saharan Africa.

The Brandt Line – one way which was found to describe the geographical distribution of different levels of economic development
        The Brandt Line was created in the 1980s to show the difference between the rich North and the poor South

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