How can economic well-being and the quality of life be measured?

What evidence is there to show that Doha (in Qatar) is one of

the richest parts of the world?

What evidence is there to show that this part of India is one of

the poorest parts of the world?

Starter

Measuring wealth

• GDP is the most common indicator of a country’s wealth

• Gross Domestic Product is the total value of goods and services produced by a country in a year.

• It is divided by the total population of the country (per capita)

Purchasing Power Parity• Organisations such as the

UN publish GDP data at Purchasing Power Parity (PPP).

• This takes into account the differences in the cost of living between countries (for example, living in Sweden and Japan is very expensive!)

• Which countries would you expect to be in the:

• Top 4?• Bottom 4?

Top 4 countries (GDP per capita – PPP)

Qatar $80,900

Luxembourg $80,500

Malta $53,400

Norway $53,000

Bottom 4 countries (GDP per capita – PPP)

Ethiopia $800

Eritrea $800

Sierra Leone $700

Niger $700

Imagine you were faced with this map in the exam and asked to ‘DESCRIBE HOW GDP VARIES BETWEEN COUNTRIES’ (4 marks)

How would you go about doing it?

Over to you…

• Now we have discussed how you could go about answering the question…

• You have 5 minutes to complete this task

Learning review

• Students will be selected at random to showcase their work via the visualiser

Measuring the quality of life• It must be remembered that development is not just based on

wealth…• The Human Development Index (HDI) was introduced in 1990 to

measure the quality of life. It contains 3 variables:1. Life expectancy2. Educational attainment (how many children go to primary,

secondary and tertiary education, plus adult literacy)3. GDP per capita (PPP$)• Each of these figures are converted into an index with an overall

HDI value of 1.0. • The closer the figure is to 1.0 = the more developed the country

is

Country GDP HDI GDP rank HDI RankUSA $29,010 0.927 Argentina $10,300 0.827 Australia $20,210 0.922 Brazil $6,480 0.739 Canada $22,480 0.932 Chad $970 0.393 China $3,130 0.701 Congo (Zaire) $880 0.479 Egypt $3,050 0.616 Ethiopia $510 0.298 France $22,030 0.918 India $1,670 0.545 Japan $24,070 0.924 MaltaMexico $8,370 0.786Qatar Sierra Leone $410 0.254 South Africa $7,380 0.695 Sudan $1,560 0.475 Sweden $19,790 0.923 Turkey $6,350 0.728 United Kingdom $20,730 0.918

Once you have completed your table – think about the following…

Are there differences between the GDP and HDI scores?

Which do you think is the best method of measuring development?

Plenary - How else can development be measured?

• You have 2 minutes to write down as many indicators that could be used to measure how developed a country is…

Suitable development indicators