Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Key Questions
For Chapter 10
1.
How is development defi ned and measured?
2 .
How does geographical situation affect development?
3.
What are the barriers to and the costs of development?
4.
How do political and economic institutions infl uence uneven development
within states?
Gross National Income
Ways of measuring development fi t into three major
areas of concern: development in economic welfare,
development in technology and production, and devel-
opment in social welfare. Beginning with the 1960s, the
most common way of comparing development in eco-
nomic welfare was to use the index economists created
to compare countries, the gross national product.
Gross
national product (GNP)
is a measure of the total value
of the offi cially recorded goods and services produced
by the citizens and corporations of a country in a given
year. It includes things produced both inside and out-
side the country's territory, and it is therefore broader
than
gross domestic product (GDP)
, which encom-
passes only goods and services produced within a coun-
try during a given year.
In recent years, economists have increasingly turned
to
gross national income (GNI)
, which calculates the
monetary worth of what is produced within a country plus
income received from investments outside the country
minus income payments to other countries around the
world. GNI is seen as a more accurate way of measuring
a country's wealth in the context of a global economy. In
order to compare GNI across countries, economists must
standardize the data. The most common way to standard-
ize GNI data is to divide it by the population of the coun-
try, yielding the
per capita GNI
. In Japan the per capita
gross national income in U.S. dollars in 2008 was $34,600.
In the United States it was $45,850. In Luxembourg it
was $64,400. But in India it was $2740, in Nigeria it was
$1770, and in Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous
country, it was $3580. This enormous range across the
globe in per capita GNI refl ects the often-searing con-
trasts between rich and poor.
Although the map of per capita GNI clearly shows
the startling contrasts between rich and poor in the world,
the statistic has several shortcomings. GNI is a limited
measure because it only includes transactions in the
formal
economy
, the legal economy that governments tax and
monitor. Quite a few countries have per capita GNI of less
than $1000 per year—a fi gure so low it seems impossible
HOW IS DEVELOPMENT DEFINED
AND MEASURED?
The economic and social geography of the con-
temporary world is a patchwork of almost inconceivable
contrasts. On the simple fi elds of shifting cultivators in
equatorial American and African forests, farmers grow
root crops using ancient methods and rudimentary tools.
On the Great Plains of North America, in Ukraine,
and in eastern Australia, farmers use expensive, mod-
ern machines to plow the land, plant seeds, and harvest
grains. Toolmakers in the villages of Papua New Guinea
still fashion their implements by hand, as they did many
centuries ago; whereas, factory workers in Japan or South
Korea produce automobiles by the shipload for distribu-
tion to markets thousands of miles away. Between these
extremes, the range and variety of productive activities are
virtually endless.
These contrasts point to a major issue in understand-
ing development: wealth does not depend solely on
what
is produced
; it depends in large part on
how and where it is
produced
. People can grow agricultural commodities with
rudimentary tools or with expensive combines. Is one or
the other necessary for development to occur? The idea of
development is everywhere, but rarely do we pause to ask
exactly what development means or how we can measure
it (Fig. 10.2).
Development implies progress, and in the modern
world progress usually means improvements in technol-
ogy and production, as well as improvements in the social
and economic welfare of people. To say a country is
devel-
oping
, then, is to say progress is being made in technol-
ogy, production, and socioeconomic well- being. Our
modern notion of development is related to the Industrial
Revolution and the idea that technology can improve the
lot of humans. Through advances in technology, people
can produce more food, create new products, and accrue
material wealth. But these things do not necessarily bring
happiness (see chapter 14), social stability, or environmen-
tal sustainability, which makes development a narrow, and
sometimes controversial, indicator of the human condition.
