18 - Reducing the global development gap

• Gross national income (GNI)


  A measure of the typical level of economic development of a society
• The mathematical mean is a very crude way of generating a 'typical' figure for GNI
• Work in subsistence farming or the informal sector is not included in GNI data
• Limitations of GNI data

  • Data may not always be accurate
  • Data may be hard to collect due to conflict or disaster
  • Rapid migration makes it hard to know population and earnings
  • Currency conversion issues
  • Errors and omissions in calculations
• Literacy rate


  The percentage of people with basic reading and writing skills
• Literacy rate


  • Most EU countries have 99%, some LICs 40-50%
  • Carrying out surveys in rural/conflict areas is difficult
• People per doctor


  The number of people who depend on a single doctor
• People per doctor


  • UK 1:350, Afghanistan 1:5,000
  • Mobile healthcare in rural areas not accounted for
• Access to safe water


  The percentage of people who have access to water without health risks
• Access to safe water

  • All EU citizens must have access, rural Angola 1/3 had access in 2018
  • Water quality can decline, cost forces use of unsafe sources, data may underestimate problems
• Infant mortality rate (IMR)

  The number of deaths of children under one year per 1,000 live births
• Infant mortality rate


  • UK 4 per 1,000, Somalia 93 per 1,000
  • Many infant deaths not recorded in poorest countries, data may be underestimated
• Life expectancy


  The average number of years a person can be expected to live
• Life expectancy


  • NEEs 65-75 years, LICs around 50 years, HICs 75+ years
  • In high infant mortality countries, life expectancy of survivors is higher than the mean suggests
• Given the World Bank's categorisation, it is possible that some LICs might really be NEEs, or vice versa
• There is a strong correlation between social development measures and economic measures like GNI per capita
• Human Development Index (HDI)


  A composite measure that combines several development indicators into one formula
• The HDI has three 'ingredients': education, life expectancy, and income
• The HDI produces a number between 0 and 1 to represent a country's overall level of development
• Highest and lowest HDI scores in 2018

  • Highest: Norway (0.953), Switzerland (0.944), Australia (0.939), Ireland (0.938), Germany (0.936)
  • Lowest: Burundi (0.417), Chad (0.404), South Sudan (0.388), Central African Republic (0.367), Niger (0.354)
• Mean GNI per person

  Can be misleading about a country's economic development
• Natural increase


  The difference between the birth rate and death rate
• Sierra Leone's death rate fell from 33 to 11 per 1,000 from 1960s to 2018, but birth rate remained high at 37 per 1,000
• LICs are in Stage 2 of the Demographic Transition Model (DTM)
• NEEs are mostly in Stage 3 of the DTM
• In Bangladesh, the fertility rate fell from 7.1 to 2.1 children per woman from 1970 to 2018
• In India, women's lives have changed similarly, with a steep fall in birth rate
• Population growth rates do not always correspond with the level of development as expected
• Countries that promote education for women have seen a steep fall in the birth rate, like Chile
• Rapid population growth can lead to overpopulation, where there are too many people for the available land and resources
• Symptoms of overpopulation and their impact

  • Falling incomes
  • Environmental degradation
  • Reduced health and happiness
• Population growth is rarely the sole cause of overpopulation and its problems
• Population growth should not be seen solely as a cost for society, as people are the human resources that industries need
• Global population growth is slowing as more countries gain higher levels of development, and is expected to level off by 2050 at around 9 billion
• Only a minority of the world's countries are still experiencing rapid growth, mostly sub-Saharan countries like Niger and Chad
• Africa's population may rise from 1 to 4 billion by 2100 due to high fertility in some countries
• the death rate has fallen, there is a high rate of natural increase
• This is shown in Figure 17.10 by the gap that opens up between the birth rate and death rate: it is widest at the end of Stage 2, corresponding with rapid population growth
• This steep gradient is the 'population explosion' that every country on the planet has experienced or is experiencing
• The UK's population explosion took place in the 1800s. India experienced it between 1950 and 2000