The most commonly used indicators according to Global Challenge by Alistair McNaught and Michael Witherwick are adult literacy, life expectancy, GNP and access to safe water; this is because they are the most informative of all the indicators.
- Adult literacy – This is an indication of the level of education in a country.
- Life expectancy – This is a measure of the quality of healthcare, levels of hygiene and sanitation in a country. In LEDC’s the under 5’s mortality rate will be fairly high, this will cause the overall life expectancy of the country to be low.
- Access to safe water – A measure of the quality of the country’s basic service provisions.
Another indicator which is used commonly is GNP, although there are problems with GNP according to Geo Active: Measuring Development by Gene Payne and these have to be considered when using this particular indicator to measure development:
- GNP exaggerates the development gap, for example: $US20 would buy you more in India than UK.
- Subsistence farming is not recorded by GNP, as well as cash transactions in informal economy.
- GNP ignores sustainable and environmentally friendly actions.
- GNP is increased by heating costs in colder climates.
However, one single indicator is an inadequate measure of development or human well-being in a particular country. A country can have a high level of development with some indicators but be underdeveloped when measured by other indicators. This is why they need to use a combination of indicators which is called a composite index – this is done using several different indicators which provides an overall picture of the economic wealth, and the well-being of people within the country and is more informative than a single indicator. In figure 2 on the next page it shows us an example of a composite index and the variation between different indicators.
From figure 1a on page 3 and figure 1b on page 4 you can see that Switzerland has the highest GNP with 36080, although it doesn’t have the best results for life expectancy, illiteracy, infant mortality and population growth. Whereas Japan has got the better result for life expectancy, infant mortality and has a lower population increase but it is let down by safe water as 4% of population don’t have access to clean water and has a lower GNP with 28190. However both of these countries compared to Kenya and Ethiopia are much more developed; Kenya GNP is only 310 compared to Switzerland’s 36080. The life expectancy is fairly low at 59 years, there is a high level of illiteracy, just over half of the population do not have access to clean water, infant mortality is fairly high and it has a large annual population increase. Ethiopia is the overall least developed country it has the lowest GNP out of all the countries with 110, has the lowest life expectancy with average age of 49 years, only 18% of the whole population have access to clean water and also has the highest infant mortality rate with 122 per 1000 babies dying. This shows us the huge difference between the more economical developed countries (MEDC’s) like Switzerland and Japan and the less economically developed countries (LEDC’s) like Kenya and Ethiopia.
From figure 1b on page 4 it shows the total rank form each country the way this was calculated was by giving each country a score for each of the indicators (1 is for the best result for the indicator and 5 is for the worst).
Form the total rank you can see that the country with best overall rank was Japan which has 9, followed by Switzerland with 10 and then UK with 12. The countries with the worst overall rank were Kenya and Ethiopia which both have 32.
There are also problems with the other development indicators such as the way they measure the amount of people who are illiterate, the local councils and authorities send out forms so that they can collect data for their country. The forms which are not sent back are counted as people who are illiterate. But people living in some LEDC’s have higher priorities such as subsistence farming so that they are able to survive; some countries villages are often scattered all over the country and some are even inaccessible. There are only very few people within these countries which have the opportunity to get a good education. This is why countries such as Ethiopia, South Africa and Kenya have a low or no results. This is the same with life expectancy and safe water indicators, the results are only accurate if data is collected from the whole population of the country and all the water has been checked thoroughly throughout the country to assure that it is safe.
Another problem with measuring the amount of development is the data becomes out of date and inaccurate very rapidly as the conditions in countries are forever changing, the data is not always reliable.
The reason the data is often unreliable is that some countries don’t want to be shown as economically poor or have a bad image so the data is often false, this is so that the economic wealth and well-being of the citizens living in the country seems at a high standard when actually it is often very poor.
Since the 1990 the UN decided on the use of the human development index (HDI – figure 2) as a measure of development. They believe this is a more reliable and accurate measure of development as it includes three indicators of well-being:
- Life expectancy
- Literacy and schooling
- Purchasing power parity per capita (PPP)
In the HDI the maximum value is 1.0. As with GNP, global HDIs can conceal widespread inequalities. However, regional HDIs can be produced and show very interesting patterns within a country. In figure 2 it also shows how the data can be presented on a world map instead of just presenting data in a table such as figure 1.
You can also see from figure 2 that the North/South dividing line coincides with the human development index which shows us that all the richer countries (MEDC’s) above the line have the highest HDI value compared to the poorer countries below the line (LEDC’s) which all have a lower HDI value.
I have come to the conclusion that there is no index capable of showing the wealth and diversity of different countries, and all the indicators available are too general and ignore inequalities. I have also come to the conclusion that when measuring development the indicators used must be selected very carefully to obtain the results you want, for example:
If you require to measure the well being of people within countries you are best to use the human development index, but if you want measure the economic development of a country you need to use indicators like average income and industrial output.
Measuring development at the moment doesn’t take into account the ‘environmentally considerate development’ and sustainable development, which is the change that allows improvements to be sustained. Development will continue to be a complex issue, because there will never be an index which will be able to show wealth and well-being, with out including the inequalities. There needs to be improvements in measuring and explaining indicators so that people are aware of the inequalities which are very important, as there are still many challenges facing both industrial and developing countries. With the support of the relevant and reliable measures of development the governments around the world will be able to develop programmes that address the needs of the deprived and ignored people of the world.
Measuring development will help to identify the achievements of countries, and allow strategies for countries who are trying to move forward.
