Category: Indicators of development

  • Social Indicators of Development

    The main social indicators of development include education, health, employment rates and gender equality.

  • What are the Most Useful Indicators of Development?

    You need to use a range of economic and social indicators to get a full picture of how developed a country is….

  • Globalisation and Global Development: Good Resources

    Some useful links to good teaching resources for Globalisation and Global Development. Good resources providing an overview of global trends and global inequalities: Firstly, this 2016 video imagines the world as 100 people, and so illustrates what percentage of people live on less than $2 a day and so on (once you get through the…

  • Assess the View that Economic Indicators Provide an Unsatisfactory Picture of Development

    Economic definitions and ways of measuring development are unsatisfactory. A much clearer and more useful picture emerges when wider social factors are included.’ Assess this view of development and underdevelopment. (20) International organizations such as the World Bank prefer to measure development using economic indicators such as Gross National Product (GNP) and Gross Domestic Product…

  • Using material from item A, analyse two reasons why Gross National Product may not be sufficient to measure a country’s level of development (10)

    Applying material from the item analyse (ten mark) questions appear with an item as the second question on section B of the AQA A Level Sociology topics paper. Before looking at this question, you might like to review the main post on this topic: economic indicators of development. Below is a suggested answer to the…

  • The Millennium Development Goals – How Much Progress was Made?

    The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were adopted by 189 nations during the UN Millennium Summit in September 2000. Eight MDGs were developed which responded to the world’s main development challenges. The goals ranged from halving extreme poverty rates to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education, all by the target date of…

  • The Human Development Index

    The United Nations uses The Human Development Index (HDI) as a summary measure for assessing long-term progress in three basic dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, access to knowledge and a decent standard of living. It provides a useful ‘snap-shot’ of a country’s economic and social development. HDI Scores in 2020 Dark…

  • Economic Indicators of Development

    International organisations such as the World Bank prefer to measure development using economic indicators. There are three main economic indicators which are used to give an indication of the overall economic health of a country. This post has primarily been written for students studying the Global Development option for A-level Sociology. Three Economic Indicators of…

  • Defining ‘Development’

    International development professionals categorise countries into ‘more’ or ‘less’ developed. This post explores the meanings and origins of these terms, looking at the concepts of first, second and third world, before looking at the criticism that such systems of classification are ethnocentric, western constructions.  This post has primarily been written for students studying the Global…

  • America – A Less Developed Country?

    The United States ranks either at the top, or very near the top on several of the main development indicators used by the World Bank and the United Nations, but if you look more closely you find that the United States might not be so ‘developed’ after all. This post starts out by exploring the seemingly…