10-1-1-concepts-of-human-development

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

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)

• 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

• Bolivia shows the importance of intervention by the national government