Humanity leads to world welfare. how ?
Answers
Answer:
The term development is highly complex and has many facets including economic progress and quality of life. Quality of life relates directly to human welfare and is influenced by economic, social, political and environmental factors. The United Nations defines development 'to lead long and healthy lives, to be knowledgeable, to have access to the resources needed for a decent standard of living and to be able to participate in the life of the community.
The process of development is also complex and doesn't always follow one particuler path. History shows us that one particular country might prioritise human welfare progression like education and health, whilst another country might prefer rapid economic progression. This latter often comes with externalities like environmental damage or regional gaps like those found in countries like China and India today. These externatities inevitbly impact human welfare.
The following economic development model developed by Rostow shows how countries may pass through five stages of economic development over time. The model is fundamentally based on economic development and excludes human welfare factors. Importantly, there is also no time line attached to this path.
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The following videos show Hans Rosling discussing development myths and Asia's rise.
Some people dislike the concept of development especially in the way it is often presented with its bias towards economic development, adopted by many western countries. The models of development place a bias on the importance on wealth and in particular individual wealth. In addition, Low Income Countries (LICs) are and presented as less important. Some countries prefert to look at development more holistically for example the Kingdom of Bhutan refers to happiness, which clearly looks beyong wealth to considers overall human welfare. Bhutan's definition of happiness does not stem from the individual general well being but is multidimensional. Bhutan consider 9 domains of Gross National Happiness psychological wellbeing, time use, community vitality, cultural diversity, ecological resilience, living standard, health, education, good governance. This model for measuring development contrasts with traditional economist's indcator Gross National Income, where total national wealth is divided by its active population to give an average income.
ACTIVITY
Why is development difficult to define?
Why is there a westen bias when describing development?
How does the way we classify countries suggest a bias?
Development Indicators
There are many ways to measure development many indicators are one dimensional such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP), others take in more than one factor and so are multidimensional such as Human Development Index (HDI)
One dimensional economic indicators include:
GDP - Gross Domestic Product is the market value of all officially recognised final goods and services produced within a country in a given period of time.
GNI - Gross National Income is the total value of goods and services produced within a country (i.e. its Gross Domestic Product), together with its income received from other countries (notably interest and dividends), less similar payments made to other countries.
These two indicators are often presented as per capita income.
Per Capita Income - also known as income per person, is the mean income of the people in an economic unit such as a country or city. It is calculated by taking a measure of all sources of income in the aggregate and dividing it by the total population.
Develoment can aslo be measured through the employment structure of a country. This is achived in two ways. Either through the percentage of employment iun each sector or the percentage of GDP derived from each sector.
Primary Employment - The extraction of raw materials
Secondary Employment - The processing and manufacturing of products
Tertiary Employment - Providing a service
Quaternary Employment - Innovation, research and design
Sectors of Industry from TonyCassidy
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Another development indicators strongly with employment structure and levels of industrialisation is energy consumption.
Energy Consumption is the amount of energy consumed per year per person. It is normally presented as tonnes of oil equivalent per person.
Other development indicators relate to human welfare factors such as life expectancy, birth rate, death rate and child and infant mortality rates.
Life Expectancy - The average numbers of years you are expected to live from birth
Death rate - The numbers of deaths per year per 1 000 of the population
Birth rate - The number of births per year per 1000 of the population
Child mortality - the number of deaths of children under the age of 5 per year
Infant mortality - the number of deaths of infants under the age of 1 per year
The following video is a useful resource that explains how birth rate and death rate changes with development.
The word welfare is defined as health, prosperity, and/or happiness of an individual or group of people. And it is generally regarded as a way of fulfilling and measuring the minimal level of social support for people who lack the means to achieve the standards of living set in the society they are in.