Relationship Between Economic & Social Development
- Development is the process of growth, or changing from one condition to another (hopefully for the better)
- Since the 1980s, countries across the world have made progress in health, family size and life expectancy
- However, there remains great inequality between countries e.g. Malawi and South Korea
Comparison of health indicators
Health Indicator | South Korea | UK | Malawi | |||
|
1980 | 2014 | 1980 | 2014 | 1980 | 2014 |
Life expectancy (years) | 66 | 82 | 74 | 81 | 45 | 63 |
Infant mortality per 1000 live births | 12 | 3 | 12 | 4 | 152 | 43 |
Maternal mortality per 100,000 births | 21 (1990) | 11 | 10 (1990) | 9 | 957 (1990) | 460 |
A traditional economic development indicator
- Traditionally, the growth of Gross Domestic Product(GDP) is used to measure progress:
- GDP per capita is the monetary value of all goods and services produced by a country every year, divided by the population
- A high GDP per capita suggests a high-earning population and productive workforce, which aids advances in health and life expectancy
- However, it is a crude average and masks the income gap between the rich and the poor
- It doesn’t consider the informal economy e.g. 94% of Uganda’s population work in untaxed jobs
Using social development indicators
- There is more to development than economic growth
- Development should consider:
- The advancement of human well-being
- The sustainability of the planet
- Social development considers social measures, including:
- Health (life expectancy, death rate, infant mortality)
- Education (literacy rate, number of schooling years)
- Measuring human development is complex, requiring more composite measures (using more than one indicator)
The Happy Planet Index
- Happy Planet Index (HPI) – a composite measure of sustainable well-being
- It doesn’t include economic development indicators / wealth
- Scored between 0-100. The higher the number, the better the level of sustainable human development
HPI =
- Experienced well-being – how satisfied people are with their lives (Gallup World Poll)
- Life expectancy - how long people on average live for (UN)
- Ecological footprint per capita – the amount of land needed to sustain the country’s resource consumption (World Wildlife Fund)
A sample of national HPI values (2019)
High | HPI | Upper middle | HPI | Lower Middle | HPI | Low | HPI |
Costa Rica | 62.1 | UK | 56.0 | Haiti | 38.2 | Zimbabwe | 28.6 |
Vanuatu | 60.4 | Peru | 55.9 | Guinea | 38.1 | Lesotho | 27.3 |
Colombia | 60.2 | Nicaragua | 55.2 | Burundi | 37.7 | Central African Republic | 25.2 |
Switzerland | 60.1 | Tajikistan | 55.2 | USA | 37.4 | Mongolia | 24.5 |
Ecuador | 58.8 | Netherlands | 54.9 | Togo | 37.3 | Qatar | 24.3 |
- Costa Rica has frequently placed in 1st position, outdoing countries considered to be more developed
- USA placed 122nd in the overall list, below many poverty-stricken countries eg. Haiti
- The countries with the lowest HPI score are also considered amongst the least developed countries globally
- Criticisms of the HPI:
- Well-being is highly subjective
- Ecological footprints of the least developed countries could be lower as its citizens can’t afford to buy lots of material objects
Contesting the more traditional western approaches to measuring development
- There are some governments who do not wish to adopt Western approaches to measuring development
- They adopt alternative approaches
- Sharia Law focuses on the importance of human welfare
- This is a legal system which controls aspects of life within Muslim countries, such as Qatar, the UEA and Yemen
Sharia Law and development
- Bolivia shows the importance of intervention by the national government
Impacts of intervention by national government
- Despite significant improvements Bolivia remains one of the poorest countries in Latin America and over 6% of the population live on less than US$3.20 a day (2020)