relationship with a country wealth and development indicator

• Different countries of the world are classified according to their level of social and economic development
• Levels of development are dependent on physical, economic and environmental factors
• Learn about how environmental, economic, and social factors affect a country's development
• Level of a country's development


  How economically, socially, culturally, or technologically advanced it is
• Factors influencing a country's development

  • Environmental
  • Economic
  • Social
• Environmental factors


  • Physical geography (e.g. mountainous terrain)
  • Coastlines and rivers
  • Natural hazards (e.g. tropical storms, floods)
  • Natural resources (e.g. oil)
• Mountainous terrain


  Can make trade and communications difficult
• Coastlines and rivers


  Allow a country to trade through export and import of goods, helping it to make money
• Natural hazards (e.g. tropical storms, floods)

  Can make development difficult
• Having large reserves of a natural resource (e.g. oil)

  Can benefit economic development if a country is able to harness it
• Economic factors


  • Poor infrastructure for services (e.g. energy, transport, communications, internet)
  • Dependence on primary or secondary sector rather than tertiary and quaternary employment
• Poor infrastructure for services


  May hinder a country's economy from growing
• Highly dependent on primary or secondary sector

  Country will often be less prosperous than one with greater proportion of tertiary and quaternary employment
• Social factors


  • Historical factors (e.g. legacy of colonialism)
  • Political factors (e.g. government instability, violence, civil war)
• From the early 14th century, countries, including Britain, began colonising large areas of the world
• Colonising countries benefited economically from the empire, especially through exploiting the colonised countries' resources, removing their governments, and enslaving their people
• Government instability


  Can result in violence and civil war, contributing to falling standards of living and contracting economies
• Environmental, economic, and social elements all play a part in a country's development, and they are often intertwined with each other
• Birth rate


  Good indicator of social progress, most developed countries have low birth rates, but can be changed by government policies which do not always mean a country is developed
• Death rate


  Effective as it shows how good a country's healthcare system is, can also indicate a good standard of living, but very rich countries have many older people so death rates can be higher than expected
• GNI per capita


  Measure of economic development only, says nothing about whether people have a good standard of living, is an average and hides information about very rich or very poor people
• HDI


  Widely recognised as a good measure of development, takes into account economic measures like income and social measures like education levels
• What is the cycle of poverty?

  Economic decline - Low personal income - Less access to food and water - Hunger and poor sanitation - Disease malnutrition and death - Depleted workforce. This repeats in a cycle