Social & Economic Measures of Development - AP Human Geography

The average person in the U.S. will produce about 4 pounds of solid waste per day.

From the nineteenth century onwards, the industrialized world saw a remarkable improvement in mortality rates, especially among children but in all age demographics. The direct causes for this were varied, but included improved medical knowledge, better access to medical care, and improved sanitation standards. Some of the more indirect causes included more food sources due to better agricultural technology, wider social mobility, and more trust in modern science, which led there to be fewer famines and lower infection rates.

Stage 1 of the demographic transition is typically pre-historic and occurs when the infrastructure and resources to guard against famine, disease, drought, and other disasters are generally not available (no flu vaccines, no food aid programs, etc.). This results in high and fluctuating birth and death rates, because environmental conditions and epidemics have a direct impact on birth and mortality rates.

Stage 2 of demographic transition includes the formation of permanent towns and societies all the way up to the industrialization and formation of large cities. During this time, food has become more abundant due to agriculture, and humans are less susceptible to famine. In addition, medicine and healthcare become available, and hygiene improves, resulting in a decline in the mortality rate; however, birth rates are still very high during Stage 2, while the mortality rate will begin to decline. The population will also begin to increase sharply at this point.

Stage 3 of the demographic transition is the continuation of Stage 2, where the birth rate has begun to decline sharply while the mortality rate continues to decline but has begun leveling off. The continued decline in the death rate can be attributed to the increased presence of healthcare and medical facilities in matured industrial societies. The sharp decline in birth rates is attributed to the increase in accessible education for women, which tends to happen in industrialized societies.

Low fertility rates lead to population decline, reductions in the labor force, a smaller tax base, and slowed economic growth. These results actually hurt social programs benefitting the elderly (e.g. social security), which are paid for by taxes that are incurred when people work and spend. In general, a smaller tax base, which is a consequence of low fertility rates, will not facilitate increased funding for social services of any kind.

Qatar has the third-highest Gross Domestic Product per capita of any country in the world- behind only Luxembourg and Switzerland. But, it scores relatively low on the gender equity scale. This is due to the differences between Qatar’s current economic climate and its longstanding cultural traditions. Based on previous evidence we can reasonably infer that Qatar’s gender equality is likely to rise to a point more in keeping with it’s Gross Domestic Product per capita, but we cannot know this for certain.

The gross domestic product is one of the chief ways a nation's economy is judged. As its name implies, the GDP is a total accounting of a nation's output, including all expenditures, revenues, and profits. Any average, like the average wage, plays no part in GDP, because GDP measures a complete output by a nation.

The primary problem with the Gross National Product is that it presents the value of all economies based on the value of the US dollar. It ignores the fact that in different countries varying amounts of goods can be purchased with the same amount of money. For example, a house in New Jersey might cost you several hundred thousand dollars, in Lesotho it might cost you less than a thousand dollars. This basically means that an individual needs to earn less money to buy the same amount of goods. This distinction is reflected in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP).

The Gross Domestic Product is very similar to Gross National Product except for one important distinction, the Gross National product takes into account foreign investments, whereas the Gross Domestic Product does not. For this reason most economic geographers consider the Gross National Product to be a slightly more useful statistic than the Gross Domestic Product.

The statistic of Purchasing Power Parity was created by geographers and economists to account for flaws in the Gross National Product - namely that the Gross National Product does not reflect how far the same amount of money goes in different countries around the world.

Bhutan is a small country in the Himalayan region of Asia that has eschewed the Gross National Product metric in favor of Gross National Happiness. The government contends that countries should be measured by how content and comfortable their citizens are rather than the aggregate sum of their riches, or industrial production.

In truth all of these are extremely strongly correlated with Gross National Product. But, income (obviously), life expectancy, and literacy rates are all more strongly correlated than is gender equity. This is because some countries, such as Italy in Europe, much of the Middle East, and Japan score far higher on measures like Gross National Product than they do on gender equity.

The Gross National Product is one of the most widely used and quoted statistics in economic geography, particularly in popular parlance. It refers to the total monetary value, in US dollars, of all the goods, services, and investments produced by a country in a year.

The Net Natural Product differs quite significantly from the other statistics used to measure relative economic development in a country because it takes into account the loss of natural resource caused by the productivity of the country. As such it is a natural favorite of environmental economic geographers.

The easiest way to figure this out is with vocabulary: primarily income vs. product. We know from the prefix in- that _in_come deals with what is coming _in_to the country. That leaves us with either Gross Domestic Product or Gross National Product. However, Gross National Product deals with the market value of the goods that have been produced by a country, not the actual amount of goods. Think of the two as quantitative vs. qualitative; GDP deals with how many goods were produced, while GNP deals with how much those same goods are worth.

Stage 4 of demographic transition is the result of industrial and economic development and is characterized by a low and stabilized birth rate and a low and constant mortality rate. Countries that have undergone their industrial revolution and have adequate public health and education infrastructure such as Japan, the United States, and the United Kingdom are in Stage 4 of demographic transition.

Stage 2 of the demographic transition begins right before population expansion and continues until the near end of a country's industrialization process. Ghana is a country that is beginning to industrialize, and its public healthcare and education infrastructure are severely underdeveloped, which is typical of a country in Stage 2. The result is a consistently high birth rate along with an exponential decrease in the mortality rate.

This is the definition of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Gross National Product (GNP) is GDP plus any net income from trade. The Human Development Index (HDI) measures the status of life in any given place based off of life expectancy, education levels, and income per capita. The GINI Index measures the economic inequality of a given area. Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) tries to equate relative values of difference currencies to make other measures of economic success equal to all currencies.