Measuring Development - Development and Globalisation Geography unit 3 A2

There are many ways of measuring development, all have their positives and negatives.

GDP - Gross Domestic Product is the total output of an economy.

• Does not take into account inequality
• Nor informal employment
• Very hard to measure with black markets etc.

GNP - Gross National Product is the GDP plus net income from domestic businesses abroad.

• Same drawbacks to GDP
• Doesn't take into account environmental, social development only assumes them

HDI - Human Development Index is an indicator that uses education (literacy rates), health (life expectancy) and living standards (GNP per capita)

• Doesn't take into account environment
• No indicator of distribution
• Doesn't take into account corruption or political freedom

PQLI - physical quality of life index takes into account literacy rate, infant mortaty rate and life expectancy.

• many factors ignored such as political freedom
• economic growth/incomes
• infrastructure

Others

• HPI - happy planet index takes into account ecology, life expectanccy and life satisfaction
• Life expectancy
• Number of mobile phones per 1000 people

All indicators have their positives and negatives but the main problem with them is that they focus on certain aspects of development and not others therefore countries may not rank highly on one but rank highly on another. However the most common is HDI which has rankings, Norway are currently top with 0.944.