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theme c unit 2 - Coggle Diagram
theme c unit 2
Measuring development
Development measures how economically, socially, culturally or technologically advanced a country is.
Studying development is about measuring how developed one country is compared to other countries in the present, or to the same country in the past.
There is no single way to calculate the level of development because of the variety of economies, cultures and peoples.
The two most important ways of measuring development is to use a range of social and economic indicators.
Social indicators measure the access a population has to wealth, jobs, education, nutrition, health, leisure and safety - as well as political and cultural freedom.
Material elements, such as wealth and nutrition, are described as the standard of living.
Health: Do the population have access to medical care? What level of healthcare is available? Is it free? One of the most popular social indicators is Life Expectancy. This is the average lifespan for someone born in a particular country. The Life Expectancy can be impacted by a range of situations such as war, disease and natural disasters. If the Life Expectancy for an area is high – this indicates an MEDC and if the Life Expectancy is low this is more likely to be an LEDC.
Education: Do the population have access to education? Is it free? What level of education is available i.e. primary, secondary or further/higher education? Another popular social indicator is Adult Literacy Rate. This is a measure of the percentage of the adult population who are able to both read and write. MEDCs such as the UK will have a very high rate (99%), whereas countries such as Somalia will have a rate closer to 24%.
Economic indicators are a measure of a country's wealth and how it is generated. They give a very accessible measure of the amount of wealth in the economy of one country compared with another
Gross National Income/Gross National Product: This is the main measure of wealth that is used to compare different countries around the world. It measures the total amount of all of the goods and services within a country each year, divided by the number of people who live there. The final figure is always given in US dollars so that an easy comparison can be made between different countries. The higher the GNI/GNP is, the more developed a country will be.
Industry: What type of industry dominates? LEDCs focus on primary industries, such as farming, fishing and mining. MEDCs focus on secondary industries, such as manufacturing. The most advanced countries tend to focus more on tertiary or service industries, such as banking and information technology.
Vehicles per 1,000 people: A final measure looks at the number of cars that people own. This can help to demonstrate the amount of money that is spread through a country. For example, Germany has 528 cars per 1,000 but China only has 8 per 1,000.
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Factors that hinder development in LEDCs
The factors influencing a country’s development can be historical, environmental, industrial or linked to issues of debt.
People often live subsistence lifestyles in LEDCs where they only produce enough food to eat. Any slight imbalance such as flood, drought or hurricane can tip these people over the edge.
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Many poor countries have no defences for floods, storms or earthquakes. When a natural hazard hits, people will struggle even more than usual.
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Many LEDCs experience climatic extremes in deserts, tundra or tropical rainforest areas. It is difficult to grow food in these environments.
Many people will suffer from malnutrition and starvation. Scientists are increasingly concerned that climate change will impact people who live in LEDC's more than MEDCs.
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Often raw materials that people in LEDCs extract to sell to MEDCs for profit have lost their ownership rights. Therefore large multinational companies will profit from the resources.
Resources will often be exported in a raw state so that people in the MEDCs will have jobs processing the materials and turning them into a more useful product.
historical factors
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There was investment in colonies, but this was focused on things that would help trade between the countries.
In many cases gold, diamonds and other valuable resources were taken back to the home countries leaving the colony with little material wealth.
Land was often taken away from the locals and given as gifts to people involved in the colonisation.
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Debt
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As poor countries develop, they are often keen to borrow money to help them to develop further. Infrastructure such as schools, hospitals, roads and railway lines all cost money to build.
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These payments will often mean that there is less money available to the government to help improve the lives of their citizens.
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In order to try to streamline the many different measures that were being used to measure development, in 1990 the United Nations decided that it was time to combine some measures into a more usable format.
The HDI was introduced to combine three measures – life expectancy (a social measure), education (average number of years of schooling and expected years of schooling– a social measure) and gross national income per capita (an economic measure).
Each of the different measures is then ranked in order. A country with a very high life expectancy will score +1 and a country with a low score will be close to 0. The same is done for the 2 other measures and a final rank order is achieved.
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