Development, Urbanization, Migration, and Quality of Life - Dragons and Tigers: A Geography of South, East and Southeast Asia - page 86

Chapter 4

Development,Urbanization,
Migration,and Quality of Life

“If there were no contradictions and no
strugglethere would be no worldno
processno life,and there would be
nothing at all. ”

M AO Z EDONG (1893-1976)

Development

currencies into international dollars. However, PCI
measures do not recognize non-monetary transactions,
such as bartering goods for services that are very impor-
tant in many Asian societies. Also, they assume an unre-
alistic equal (per person) distribution of money Table 4-1
shows a variety of economic development measures.
More informative measures of development include
the Human Development Index (HDI) and the Gini Index
(GI) . The HDI is a composite index from 0 to 1 with 0 at
the low end of the scale. HDI measures a country' s average
achievements in three basic aspects of human develop-
ment: health, knowledge, and a decent standard of living.
These categories look at various factors such as availability
of doctors, level of education, and access to clean water.
HDIs suggest that people are better off in Japan or
South Korea where the standard of living is very high.
Thais are better off than Cambodians but not as well off as
Singaporeans. Overall, people in East Asia have better
standards of living than people in South or Southeast Asia.
The Gini Index measures relative income inequality
within a country . A country rates a GI of 0 if it has ab-
solute equality or a GI of 1 if it has absolute inequality .
For example, Denmark, with a GI of 0.24, has the world' s
most equal society in terms of income distribution.
There, the lowest 20 percent of society (in terms of in-
come) controls 10.6 percent of PCI and the highest

There are many ways of defining and assessing develop-
ment. No two countries are exactly alike in measurable
aspects of development such as per person income, calo-
rie intake, or number of doctors. More importantly , dif-
ferent countries have different ideas about what
development is. For example, the strength of family ties
may be more important than the availability of a medical
doctor. Access to sufficient food may be more important
than monetary income. Whatever the case, development
is a concept widely used by governments and aid organi-
zations in determining needs, investments, and project
applications. In this chapter you will learn about various
perceptions and impacts of development.

MEASURING DEVELOPMENT
All nations have been assigned descriptors based on cri-
teria such as per capita income (PCI) based on gross na-
tional or domestic product (GNP or GDP). PCI is quite
misleading, in part because it does not provide informa-
tion on the buying power of a currency . A more contem-
porary measure of income is PCI based on purchasing
power parity (PPP). PPP is based on GDP , accounts for
price differentials among countries, and translates local

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