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What Is Development?
Are you sure that you know what development really means with respect to
different countries? And can you determine which countries are more developed and which are less?
It is somewhat easier to say which countries are richer and which are poorer. But
indicators of wealth, which reflect the
quantity of resources available to a society,
provide no information about the allocation of those resourcesfor instance,
about more or less equitable distribution
of income among social groups, about the
shares of resources used to provide free
health and education services, and about
the effects of production and consumption
on peoples environment. Thus it is no
wonder that countries with similar average
incomes can differ substantially when it
comes to peoples quality of life: access to
education and health care, employment
opportunities, availability of clean air and
safe drinking water, the threat of crime,
and so on. With that in mind, how do we
determine which countries are more developed and which are less developed?
How do we
determine which
countries are more
developed and
which less?
Conditions enabling
economic growth
Conditions enabling
human development
Goal:
Human developmentb
Health services
Education services
Employment opportunities
Democracy
Environmental protection
?
?
?
a. See the Glossary about the difference between economic growth and economic development.
b. One should distinguish between indicators that measure components of human development (such as health and literacy)
and those that measure its conditions (such as health services and education).
1. WHAT IS DEVELOPMENT?
Sustainable Development
Sustainable development is a term widely
used by politicians all over the world even
though the notion is still rather new and
lacks a uniform interpretation. Important
as it is, the concept of sustainable development is still being developed and the
definition of the term is constantly being
revised, extended, and refined. Using this
book, you can try to improve the definition as you learn more about the relationships among its main componentsthe
economic, social, and environmental factors of sustainable developmentand as
you decide on their relative significance
based on your own system of values.
According to the classical definition,
given by the United Nations World
Figure 1.2
Social objectives
Equity
Social cohesion
Social mobility
Participation
Cultural identity
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
Environmental
objectives
Healthy environment
for humans
Rational use of
renewable natural
resources
Conservation of
nonrenewable natural
resources
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within and among generations of people, can be seen as having at least three
aspects: economic, social, and environmental. Only development that manages
to balance these three groups of objectives can be sustained for long (Figure
1.2). Conversely, ignoring one of the
aspects can threaten economic growth as
well as the entire development process.
2
Comparing Levels of Development
South Asia
Sub-Saharan
Africa
12
$$350
= US$1,000
$ $490
$800
Europe and
Central Asia
$ $2,220
$ $3,320
High-income
countries
$1,780
$
$24,930
India
China
Russia
United States
Germany
Japan
13
High-income
countries
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ment. Dividing countries into less developed and more developed does not
help much either, because it is unclear
where to draw the line between the two
groups. In the absence of a single criterion
of a countrys development, such divisions
can only be based on convention among
researchers. For example, it is conventional in the World Bank to refer to lowincome and middle-income countries as
developing, and to refer to high-income
countries as industrial or developed.
The relatively accurate classification of
countries into developing and devel-
Upper-middle-income
countries
Lower-middle-income
countries
Low-income
countries
No data
tries has achieved the established threshold of high per capita income. But on
the other, many of them are highly
industrialized. This is one reason their
classification by the World Bank is currently under review. Note that in the
World Banks World Development Report
1982 these same countries were classified as industrial nonmarket, and in
current United Nations publications
most of them are still grouped among
industrial countries.
Figure 2.2
High-income
countries
16%
Middle-income
countries
28%
Low-income
countries
56%
7%
23%
Countries with transition economies (30%)
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