Measuring Development Flashcards

All 12 cards in this deck

What does gross national income (GNI) per head measure?

The total income of a country from home and abroad, divided by its population, usually given in US$.

What is meant by infant mortality rate?

The number of children/babies who die under the age of 1, per 1000 live births per year.

Which measure of development combines income, life expectancy and education levels?

The Human Development Index (HDI).

What does the people per doctor figure tell you about a country?

The number of people for each doctor - a high figure shows poor access to healthcare and lower development.

True or false? A country with a high literacy rate is likely to be more developed than one with a low literacy rate.

True. A high literacy rate shows good access to education, which is linked to higher development.

Why does GNI per head hide inequality within a country?

It is an average per person, so it does not allow for extremes of wealth and poverty: a small, very rich group can raise the average while most people stay poor.

Why are economic measures of limited value in the poorest countries?

Many people are subsistence farmers or work in the informal sector, so they are economically active but do not appear in the figures.

Give one disadvantage of using birth rates as a measure of development.

Birth rates may be affected by government policies, so more or fewer babies are born if incentives or disincentives are offered.

True or false? Comparing countries using measures given in US$ is always fair.

False. US$ figures do not allow for the relative spending power of different currencies.

What is life expectancy, and how does it change as a country develops?

The average number of years a person born in a country can expect to live. It rises as a country develops, because healthcare, diet and sanitation improve.

What do the birth rate and the death rate measure?

The birth rate is the number of live births, and the death rate the number of deaths, per 1000 people in a country per year.

On what scale is the Human Development Index (HDI) given, and what does a higher score mean?

From 0 to 1. The closer a country's score is to 1, the more developed it is.