Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
represents a direct effort to measure the progress made by countries in
advancing the standing of women in wider political and economic devel-
opmental terms.
key
points
•
Measures of development have closely reflected the various para-
digms of development that have been advanced and embraced over
the years.
•
GDP and GNP per capita have been used since the 1960s as measu-
res of economic growth.
•
The HDI was developed by the United Nations in the late 1980s to
reflect three major dimensions of human development - longevity,
knowledge and standard of living.
•
The HDI can be adapted and rendered as a strongly gendered mea-
sure of development.
•
Wider sets of dimensions, including those involved in the MDGs, can
be used to measure the multidimensional nature of development,
including social welfare issues and human rights - as in the Gender
Inequality Index.
35
further
reading
Wider aspects of the assessment and measurement of development are
covered in Chapter 1 of Rob Potter et al.'s (2008) textbook,
Geographies
of Development: an Introduction to Development Studies
. Further sum-
mary treatments are to be found in
Geographies of Development in the
21st Century
by Sylvia Chant and Cathy McIlwaine (2009) and
Theories
and Practices of Development
by Katie Willis (2005), in both cases in the
introductory Chapter 1. For the view of a development economist on
issues of measuring development, a readable account is offered in 'The
development gap and the measurement of poverty', Chapter 2 of Tony
Thirlwall's (2006)
Growth and Development: with Special Reference to
Developing Economies
. For the HDI etc., see http://hdr.undp.org/en/
statistics/indices/gdi_gem/
.
